Behrooz Moazami

Behrooz Moazami, Associate Professor, was a Patrick G. O’ Keefe Distinguished Professor of History. He is the founder and Director of the Middle East Peace Studies program at Loyola University New Orleans. Dr. Moazami joined Loyola's History Department in 2007 and initiated the annual Loyola University Students Peace Conference in 2008. Previously he taught at several universities, including the New School for Social Science Research, the City College of New York, New York University, and Tulane University. He retired from Loyola in 2023. 

Moazami holds two doctorates. His first dissertation under the direction of Professor Jean Marie Vincent, “Les Etats nations européens  et l'avenir de la communaute européenne en tant que communauté politique,” in Political Science (University of Paris VIII, 1998) was acknowledged as Très Honorable and earned him the EU Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Center for European Studies, New York University (2001-2002). He received the Albert Salomon Memorial Award in Sociology (New School for Social Research, New York, 2004) for his second dissertation, “The Making of the State, Religion, and the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1796--1979),” in Sociology and Historical Studies, co-directed by Professors Charles Tilly and Jose Casanova.

For nearly two decades before joining academia, Moazami was a professional political activist and contributed to a number of Iranian dissident publications. He co-founded and co-edited Andisheye Rahai a Persian review on politics, theory, and society while living in Paris in exile (1983-1992).

His book State, Religion, and Revolution, 1796 to the Present (Palgrave-MacMillan, New York, London, 2013) challenges basic assumptions about recent Iranian history and constructs a new synthesis of the history of state and religion in Iran from 1796 to the present. Arguing that the 1979 revolution has not ended, he relates political and religious transformations in Iran to the larger instability of the Middle East region and concludes that turmoil will continue until a new regional configuration evolves.

Currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU in his sabbatical year (2014-2015), Moazami is simultaneously working on two different projects: exploring further on state formation and state theory by explaining and expanding on the Euro-Asian state formation, and problematizing the notion of “identity” and “identity formation” in social and historical analysis, and in everyday life and politics. All the while he continues dreaming about and conspiring to promote peace and democracy in the Middle East.

Dr. Moazami is a Trustee of the Ardeshir Mohassess Trust formed to preserve the legacy of the artist and to help other disabled artists in need. Moazami as the friend of late Ardeshir and a Trustee has helped organizing an academic conference and an exhibition at NYU (2010), facilitated production of the documentary, Ardeshir Mohassess: The Rebellious Artist, an IFVC Production, New York (2013) and an exhibition at Art Dubai (2014).