A symposium in honor of women’s activist Mahnaz Afkhami and her recent significant donation to the Georgetown University Library brought together activists, scholars, and policymakers from across the globe to Copley Formal Lounge for a day of reflection, learning, and dialogue centered on women, peace, activism, and human rights on Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
The symposium, titled “A New Architecture for Human Rights: Politics, Activism, and the Global Women’s Movement,” commemorated Afkhami’s more than fifty years of pioneering work in advancing women’s rights worldwide. It also marked Georgetown’s recent acquisition of the Afkhami Collection, an extraordinary donation of the papers of Mahnaz Afkhami and her late husband, scholar Gholam Reza Afkhami.
This collection—consisting of primary source documents, oral histories, books, photographs, papers, and previously unreleased reports—serves as an unparalleled archive of pre-Revolutionary Iran and the evolution of the global women’s movement. These precious materials will be held in the Booth Center for Special Collections, where they will soon be catalogued and made available to scholars, researchers, faculty, students, activists, and the public worldwide. You can read more about the Afkhami Collection here.
Attendees at the symposium heard from Mahnaz Afkhami, Founder and President Emerita of the Women’s Learning Partnership and former Iranian Minister of State for Women’s Affairs; Azar Nafisi, writer and author of Reading Lolita in Tehran; and Karima Bennoune, University of Michigan law professor and former UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights.
Additional speakers included Shahla Haeri, professor of anthropology and former director of the Women’s Studies Program at Boston University; Sanam Anderlini, author and Executive Director of the International Civil Society Action Network; Habiba Sarabi, former member of the Afghanistan peace negotiation team and former governor of Bamyan; Nadereh Chamlou, development advisor and board member of the Women’s Learning Partnership; Madhavi Sunder, Georgetown Law professor and board chair of the Women’s Learning Partnership; Kelly J. Shannon, historian and visiting scholar at George Washington University; and Melanne Verveer, Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security.
Virtual remarks were delivered by The Honorable Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Anchor for CNN.