Mohammad Gholi Majd
Mohammad Gholi Majd (), also known as Mohammad Gholi Madjd, is an agricultural economist and a historian. He has contributed to the fields of land tenure and distribution, agrarian policy, and the history of modern Iran. Majd has used the American diplomatic archives pertaining to Iran to provide a history of the under-studied period of 1914 to 1941. In addition, he is the author of a trilogy on Iran's three historical famines: The Great Famine of 1869-1873, the World War I famine of 1917-1919, and the World War II famine and typhus epidemic of  1942-1944, major calamities that, in the words of one reviewer, have been "often overlooked" and "largely forgotten", or, as indicated by another reviewer, entirely relegated to oblivion. Majd obtained an MA in political economy from University of Saint Andrews, a post graduate diploma in economic development from University of Manchester, and an MA in agricultural economics also from University of Manchester. He earned a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1978. In 2002, the Department of Agricultural Economics at Cornell University was renamed the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Majd taught economics at  several American universities prior to concentrating on Iranian studies. He was a lecturer at the Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania, from 1992 to 1998, and an adjunct professor at Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University, from 1992 to 1997. Criticisms. Certain reviewers have criticised Majd's research. Ervand Abrahamian has described claims by Majd that the Persian famine of 1917-1919 was a genocide as being a "wild accusation" and that the figures put forward by Majd were an "exaggerated discussion". Cormac Ó Gráda equally describes the claim of genocide as "not possible to take literally . The authors Alidad Mafinezam and Aria Mehrabi in their work Iran and Its Place Among Nations" have stated that Majd's work suffers from methodological defects, including a lack of triangulation.