Saeid Golkar

Saeid Golkar is a senior fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Golkar received his PhD in political science from Tehran University in 2008 before moving to the U.S. in 2010. He has taught and conducted research at Stanford University and Northwestern University. His research focuses on international and comparative politics of authoritarian regimes, with an emphasis on the Middle East and North Africa. Golkar is an authority on the Basij militia and the IRGC, and his first book, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-revolutionary Iran (Columbia University Press, 2015), was awarded the Washington Institute’s silver medal prize.