Gholam Reza Afkhami
Gholam Reza Afkhami is senior scholar and director of Social Science Research and International Studies at the Foundation for Iranian Studies, a Washington-based research institution dedicated to the study of Iranian history, culture, economy and politics, created with the financial support from the twin sister of the Shah of Iran, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi. He is also the father of basketball player Ehsan Afkhami. He was formerly a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution on Revolution, War and Peace at Stanford (1980–1983), where he studied issues of development in the Third World, lectured on conflict and concord  in the US relations with the countries of the Middle East, and prepared a text on the Iranian Revolution. Before the revolution of 1979, he was secretary general of Iran's National Committee for World Literacy Program (1975–1979), headed by Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, and deputy minister of interior, 1974–1975. Between 1967 and 1979 he was professor of politics and until 1974 associate dean of the College of Economics and Political Science at the National University of Iran. Publications. Afkhami is author of several books and articles in Persian and English. Persian. Afkhami's most recent book is The Life and  Times of the Shah, a history of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran 1941-1979, set against the political, economic, social, and cultural dynamics of the country and the world in which he lived and worked. The volume was published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, winter 2008/09 ().