Talk:Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

CV?
This is not wikipedia but rather a character assassination of the subject, Dr. Afrasiabi. It refers to him as "lamazhab" a pejorative for godless and then blames him for his legal troubles and is full of false information. Shame on you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.21.212 (talk) 19:14, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

This page is outrageous. Either the person concerned in this page or someone else is using it as a CV host page by laying out every single article that this person has written or is referenced to within. It goes completely against any ethical and moral code of an encyclopaedia, especially, in this case, of Wikipedia's. This amounts to an outright abuse of an open system for the purpose of personal gain and recognition. Sufitul (talk) 07:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So what do you propose? Sure seems to meet notability requirements, if not a tad over-representative hehe. One suggestion would be to move all those links to the talk page for the time being until the original creator of the article or someone with some time on their hands can go through all the works cited and add inline citations to all respective claims of notability, with perhaps a condensed "Further reading" or "Works" section. Or you can nominate it up for deletion at WP:AfD although consensus will probably be "keep and cleanup". OlEnglish (Talk) 18:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Never one for kind words, I'm going to remove nearly every every link on the page. People can always reinstate the useful ones at a later date but no-one is going to go through every link on the page and see how relevant they individually are. Greggers (t &bull; c) 20:47, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Haha, I came here to remark that this page looks like a fucking CV. Looks like ya'll bet me to it.

clarification: which versions?
i've just come across this recently. From looking at the history, my guess is that the versions of the page e.g. from March to May 2009 that are about 24,500 bytes in size are the ones considered "outrageous" and "like a fucking CV". Just to clarify the conversation, here are three examples: 1 2 3. i agree that whoever made those edits failed to understand that wikipedia is a volunteer, radically transparent, peer-review edited encyclopedia.

Even the present version needs work - i fail to see why a list of book chapters are essential to the article, unless they are particularly notable (e.g. provoked a major political scandal, resignation of a minister, whatever). Boud (talk) 19:39, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

[COI post]
This page is fantastic. It contains dozens upon dozens of articles and interviews by Dr. Kaveh Afrasiabi, in major international newspapers and journals such as UN Chronicle, Council on Foreign Relations, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, two German dailies, Middle East Journal, Harvard International Review, Harvard Theological Review, Mediterannean Affairs, Global Dialogue, Middle East Online, Asia Times, Middle East Executive Reports, Middle East Insight, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Times, Washington Post, etc. Also, this site contains a useful reference of humerous articles and television references to Kaveh Afrasiabi, transcripts of his interviews with CNN, etc. The site is the best confirmation of Dr. Afrasiabi's world-wide recognition and the translation of his works in several languages further confirms this. This site is a must read for any one interested in the subject of Iran, Middle East affairs, and global politics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.98.52.70 (talk • contribs) 2009-02-28T00:49:17

chapters
The following is for easy "archiving" - i removed this from the article: Can someone see why any or all of these are especially notable? Boud (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "Islamic Ecotheology" in Islam and Ecology (Harvard University Press)
 * 1998 "Communicative theory and theology," Harvard Theological Review
 * 2003 "Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11" in Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with Abbas Maleki (No 2, 2003).
 * 2003 Religion, Environment and World Views: A Global Anthology' (Wadsworth)
 * 2003 "Islam and Post-Anthropocentrism" in Encyclopedia of Religion and Environment' (Chicago University Press)
 * 2007 "Realism, Not Idealism, Keeping Iran's Nuclear Potential Latent," Harvard International Review

book references
TODO: Books should be properly cited, e.g. with ISBN numbers etc, especially as they're produced in a rich western country and should be easy to check. Boud (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Boud (talk) 23:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

see what is notable in comparable bio pages
TODO: see Category:Iranian political scientists. Boud (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Most seem OK, though without a huge amount of content - see WP:BIAS. The page Hossein Bashiriyeh seems to be a bit of a cv - just a list of major publications rather than a real article - probably it should be tagged, even if it's not as bad as this one got to. Boud (talk) 00:18, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Which institute in Paris did Afrasiabi teach at?
What is the "Institute For Strategic Studies in Paris"? fr:Liste d'instituts d'études stratégiques gives: i would guess (speculate) the first of these, given that the head of the institute is an Iranian, Ali Rastbeen. There's no sign on google of associating Afrasiabi with either of these, but that doesn't necessarily prove much. Institutes like these are presumably paranoid about... security and given various connections with governments and military they probably are not as open as ordinary universities, and have only recently accepted giving out any info on the web. The more they become reliably documented, the more easily they can be debunked... Boud (talk) 21:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * fr:Institut international d'études stratégiques (IIES)
 * fr:Institut d'études de sécurité de l'Union européenne (ISS)

A third possibility is: but Afrasiabi does not appear to be either a permanent or associated member according to the website right now.
 * Foundation for Strategic Research

Someone added a reference that quotes Afrasiabi's presence at this institute with this apparent title, but we still are nowhere nearer to any evidence of whether this is a secret institute or whether it is a misnaming of an institute that has an internet presence. i've put a 'what' tag to alert people to this. Boud (talk) 21:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

support during court case
In this edit, new user User:Shaka01 replaced a wikified sentence that included a "fact" tag by a non-wikified sentence including the rather rarely-used word "luminaries" and a lot of details regarding the personalities who allegedly supported Afrasiabi. IMHO there is no need to put detailed descriptions of the various notable people. If we really want descriptions of these people, then we should use the NPOV-ed summaries at the tops of those people's wikipedia entries. Unfortunately, each of these people have complex public personalities with many roles, so it would be excessive to include all of them. i've chosen the first one of each for most of them. For Fahrang Mehr, whose article is clearly in a state of uncertainty, i chose his status as former deputy PM of Iran, since that seems more of a unique notable characteristic than being a professor. There must be 100,000's or more of professors in the world, but the number of former deputy prime ministers or prime ministers or presidents is probably only about a few thousand or so. Boud (talk) 20:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

book chapters
Book chapters are less relevant than books; "etc" is too vague, this is not a chat over coffee, it's an encyclopedia; book chapters need correct referencing. Also, "environment" is vague - are the uncited chapters about the relation between Islam, the ecological environment and theology? or are they separately about each of these subjects? Boud (talk) 21:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

newspapers, iran nuclear program
My recent corrections: wikification of recently added cv-type data; removal of etc; nuclear program: removed "peaceful" and inserted NPOV first line description from Nuclear program of Iran. Just some more explanation about the last part:

In statements by some media and politicians, there is clearly a lot of confusion, intentional or otherwise, between the civilian energy nuclear power program in Iran and an alleged military nuclear power program in Iran. The English-language wikipedia contains separate articles on these two issues: Nuclear program of Iran and Iran and weapons of mass destruction. The intention is to have similar titles for all states that have significant civilian and/or military nuclear programs and to let claims about the existence or non-existence or legality or illegality of those programs be documented in those articles.

Whoever edited the present article about Afrasiabi presumably claims that Afrasiabi supports the civilian nuclear power program. This is why i gave the link. i removed the word "peaceful" since it's not totally clear that a civilian nuclear program is necessarily peaceful in any country, and it could be interpreted as a claim that the nuclear program as a whole is uniquely peaceful. If it is such a claim, then it would have to be clearly stated as a claim by Afrasiabi, in addition to his support of the program. In any case, i added what is essentially the first line of the content of nuclear program of Iran to the sentence here. This does not constitute my opinion - it's the result of the WP:NPOV process over at that article. Boud (talk) 21:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

relevance of conflict with Harvard in intro/lead; Harvard Uni conflict in Teaching section
Awful mistreatment and defamation of Dr Afrasiabi by wikipedia. shame. —unsigned (not my comment; Boud (talk) 20:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC))


 * i have removed the text "He is a failed academic who was expelled from Harvard for extortion. " from the introductory/lead paragraph. See WP:LEAD for guidelines about the intro/lead in general.


 * i am also restoring material regarding the conflict with Harvard University to the Teaching section. This diff shows the net result of 20 edits by various editors - someone could search to find which author removed the material.


 * If someone has an argument for removing it, then please state that argument. Why should material on the conflict be removed? If it is POV, then NPOV it. It's clearly an important event from the POVs both of Harvard Uni and Afrasiabi.


 * Should it also go in the intro? The intro should include short NPOV summaries of each of the sections of the main content - see WP:LEAD for details. So maybe a short summary with some key references should go to the introduction/lead. But it must be NPOV, especially given BLP. i suggest that editors make suggestions and/or come to consensus on the talk page, e.g. in this section, not by edit wars. Boud (talk) 21:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris - the institute still remains secret
See Talk:Kaveh_L._Afrasiabi section above. Boud (talk) 21:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Kaveh L. Afrasiabi - middle name
Dear Sir/Madam:

I write this to demand an immediate correction of the egregious number of falsehoods about me in your wikipedia. It refers to me as "Lamazhab" a pejorative for godless and as if that were n't enough it is full of subjective and prejudiced commentaries instead of objective facts. I hope you rectify this immediately. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.233.21.212 (talk) 19:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC) —indent removed for readability. Boud (talk) 21:24, 11 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It sounds like you are the subject of this article - you are most welcome to correct errors yourself, especially if they are obvious vandalism. Please do the work of searching through the history page if you wish to find out which editor replaced "L." by "Lamazhab" for your middle name.


 * As for "subjective and prejudiced commentaries", i strongly recommend that you learn about the academic culture of the wikipedia. After all, you are an academic yourself. There are several boxes at the top of the article, which you should read, and where you should click on links to learn more. You should also read the boxes at the top of this discussion page. If you follow those community guidelines - or help modify them, by discussion among the community - then you will probably find most other wikipedia editors quite happy to give hints and help clean up. Demanding "immediate" correction of an unstated list of problems is not useful. On the contrary, there are several pending questions (see the article and this talk page) that you could help with by (preferably) providing external references (preferably online), or at least e.g. in the case of the "Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris", you could specify what the exact name of the institute is. We are all just volunteers editing the Wikipedia. Boud (talk) 21:24, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

June 2010 arrest and injury incident
Following the first reference that MadPoster provided, which refers prominently to the Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy, i've proposed the section title "June 2010 arrest and injury incident". We don't yet know if this can count as a "controversy", e.g. from the POV of a wide public. We do know that the arrest and injury seem to be undisputed and probably the major (so far undisputed, but see comment below) aspects of this.

A few points about the rewrite:
 * The generalisation that Afrasiabi has had more legal troubles in his life than any typical US resident sounds a little close to original research, so i removed it.
 * The conflict that went to the Supreme Court is already in the Teaching section, since it relates to another academic.
 * Test-driving a car without a valid licence plate and then paying the fines hardly sounds like an encyclopedic-level piece of information. This only becomes relevant as the alleged reason for arresting him.

A complication to the above is that the Hamsayeh and Press TV sources say that the Mayor's Office claims that there is no record of him being arrested. These are only indirect reports, so unless there is more direct info on this, i don't think that this is an argument against using "arrest" in the title of the section. But maybe someone else has a better idea... Boud (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up my addition. I prefer to treat the interviews Afrasiabi has granted, and the media reports based solely on his own account, with extreme caution. The first reports from Press TV and the International News Network, for example, erroneously placed the incident in New York City. Afrasiabi claimed on July 1 that the Mayor's Office and police denied that the arrest had taken place; but the department's daily police log, written up on June 28, details incident 10-004714, Afrasiabi's arrest.CPD Log He alleges that the Cambridge Chronicle sent "a reporter and a photographer...to my home and they took photos and promised to publish it, and yet they censored it."Press TV; but the paper publishes only on a weekly basis, and ran a full length story and photo in its next edition - no censorship was evident.Cambridge Chronicle So I have inserted qualifiers before each of Afrasiabi's allegations, to clarify that this is his version of events, told from his POV, in order to preserve a Neutral POV.

I've also excised the reference to the Gates controversy. The Chronicle wrote that "although the circumstances are different, this isn't the first time Cambridge Police have come under fire." That seems, to me, to make the point that the two have no solid connection, other than that both involve allegations against the same department. MadPoster (talk) 14:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

opinion on 2009 pres election and Ahmadinejad
Someone removed the subsection on the 2009 pres election and Ahmadinejad, with the justification "removed unreferenced section tagged as such since feb 2010". It's true that the section looked mostly like unreferenced opinion. i'm just noting it here for convenience. If someone thinks it's important to restore, then please do the work of referencing and NPOV-ing it properly. Boud (talk) 22:55, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

TODO list - Kaveh, if you are reading this, feel free to help to improve the article by clarifying!
Below is a list of some of the puzzling questions which would make the article clearer if they had answers.

Kaveh: if you are reading this, you are welcome to answer "anonymously", i.e. without proving (nor disproving) that you are you. What would be most useful is to point to online references, called in wikipedia jargon "reliable sources" that give some evidence for your answers, although in principle, offline sources can also be used. Boud (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Click Talk:Kaveh_L._Afrasiabi to see the above question about which "strategic studies" institute in Paris Afrasiabi taught at.
 * 2) * edit this answer...
 * 3) Afrasiabi is frequently referred to as the Director of the NGO Global Interfaith Peace, but there is no obvious online evidence about this organisation, even though the name suggests that it's a global organisation, and it's hard to imagine a global organisation existing today without a website... Maybe it's just a tiny local association with the aim of contributing to world interreligious peace, i.e. "global" describes the aims of the organisation, not the organisation itself. Does anyone know anything at all about the organisation? Is Afrasiabi still its Director? It would be good to at least have enough info (even unreferenced) to add a description so that it's something like "a small Boston NGO called Global Interfaith Peace".
 * 4) * edit this answer...
 * 5) See the five (as of 21:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)) other instances of "clarification needed" or "citation needed" in the article. These need clarification and reliable sources. Open WP:RS in another panel to read the guideline without losing this page from your browser.
 * 6) Evidence needed that Farhang Mehr supported Afrasiabi in the Harvard/etc. case.
 * 7) * edit this answer...
 * 8) Book chapters - most recent books by big publishers have online info, including e.g. chapter/author info if they're multi-author-by-chapter books. Is there any online info?
 * 9) * edit this answer...
 * 10) "environment" can mean many different things - please clarify
 * 11) * edit this answer...
 * 12) What is the name of the compendium on Mahdism and what is the name of its publisher? Is there any online info? Is the book in English? Arabic? Persian?
 * 13) * edit this answer...
 * 14) Call for Holocaust education - in what public document was this reported?
 * 15) * edit this answer...

The initial list of questions above is mine, but if Kaveh or anyone else answers, it will become a multi-author thread. Please just add answers (edit the templates) within the thread. Boud (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Excessive coverage of 2010 arrest
Having just found this article without knowing anything about its subject, it seems to me to devote a disproportionate amount of attention to his arrest in 2010. This may have provoked a brief controversy, but it doesn't seem to have had any lasting consequences (the warrant was quickly dismissed) and I can hardly imagine that it's one of the most important events of this man's life, as this article makes it appear. On the other hand, this article should probably have more content about Mr. Afrasiabi's views, theories and positions, and I think the section in the first paragraph about his 'legal conflict with should also be expanded. This section mentions that he was involved in a legal dispute which lasted from 1996 to 2003, in which various notable people voiced their support, but doesn't make clear what it was actually about. I'm guessing that was probably more significant to his life than the 2010 arrest, so it seems rather under-covered by this article. Robofish (talk) 21:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)