Mehrangiz Kar

Mehrangiz Kar (Persian: مهرانگیز کار‎) (b. 1944, Ahvaz, Iran) is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist. She is also author of the book Crossing the Red Line, and an activist of women's rights in Iran.

Mehrangiz Kar

Early life

Kar was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and in the 2005/06 academic year was based at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.[1]

She has also been recognized as a Scholar at Risk through an international network of universities and colleges working to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide. She currently works in Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women in Brown University. She is also an instructor of courses on women's rights in Iran at Tavaana: E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society.[2]

In 2002, the U.S. First Lady, Laura Bush, gave her the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy award.[3]

She is the widow of Siamak Pourzand, a fellow Iranian dissident and former prisoner of conscience[4] who committed suicide on 29 April 2011, after a long period of torture and imprisonment.[5]

Awards and honours
  • 2004 Recipient of the annual Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers Committee For Human Rights) Human Rights Award
  • 2002 Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize (France) for a lawyer working to promote women’s human rights, awarded jointly by the Human Rights Institute of the Bar of Bordeaux and the European Lawyers Union.
  • 2002 Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy (U.S.), for advancing human rights and democracy.
  • 2002 Hellman/Hammett Grant from Human Rights Watch (International) for a writer who is a target of political persecution.
  • 2001 Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award of PEN New England (Massachusetts, U.S.), for a writer who has struggled in the face of oppression and brutality to make her voice heard.
  • 2000 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award of PEN Clube (Netherlands), for writers who have lost their liberty for political and ideological reasons.
  • 2000 Donna Dell’anno Award of the Conseil De Lavallee Consiglio Regionale Della Valle D’aosta (Italy), for persevering in the fight for freedom and the defense of women’s rights.
  • 2000 Latifeh Yarshater Award of the Society for Iranian Studies (U.S.), for the best book on Iranian women.
  • 1975 Forough Faroukhzad Award (Iran), for best article.

See also

References
  1. Past Carr Center Fellows, Retrieved on 11 March 2011.
  2. "Tavaana Faculty". Tavaana. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
  3. Publications Archived May 9, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  4. "Siamak Pourzand: a case study of flagrant human rights violations". Amnesty International. May 2004. Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
  5. Eli Lake (1 May 2011). "Longtime Iranian dissident kills self 'to prove his disgust for regime'". Washington Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 6 May 2011.


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