Ruhi Ramazani's New Book/Retrospective

Prof. R.K. Ramazani

I posted last month about how Professor Ruhi Ramazani was marking 60 years of teaching at the University of Virginia, and I linked to a reminiscence by him.

Now I want to note this release from UVA: " Book to Serve as Capstone to Long and Illustrious Career of Iran Foreign Policy Expert."  His new book, Iranian Foreign Policy:Independence without Freedom, due out next year, will be a retrospective collection of his articles and book chapters dealing with, as the release puts it, "a case that has been central to much of his scholarship on Iran: that truly understanding the country’s foreign policy requires a nuanced awareness of its culture, people, and long history of occupation and domination by foreign powers."

Read the whole release: it quotes many of his colleagues and former students. I never had the privilege of studying under Ruhi, but I have worked with him and edited his work, and he remains a great scholar, a personal friend, and very much a gentleman of the old school.

My one quibble: why "capstone" of his career? Yes, in his 80s he doesn't get around as well as he once did, and he emailed me his regrets that he couldn't make it to the MEI Annual Conference (as he did like clockwork for decades).  Let's say it's a retrospective on a 60 year career — until he has enough new articles for the next retrospective.

Full disclosure: I know this forthcoming book will contain a number of articles that originally appeared in The Middle East Journal, because I saw the list of requests for copyright release. Ruhi has been a Journal regular from the 1950s. I hope there will be more opportunities to publish him.