Member, Editorial Board, Human Rights Review, 2000-present
Co-Chair, Annual Conference, “Iran and the Region,” Center for Iranian Research, 1998

Book: Torture and Democracy (Princeton, 2007), 880 pages. Is torture compatible with modern democracies, and if so, how? I focus on new techniques designed to leave little evidence of brutality, techniques have an affinity for democracies, rather than dictatorships. I also assess the arguments about the effectiveness of torture. “Torture and Democracy immediately lays claim to be the most compendious and the most rigorous treatment of the subject yet written. Saul Bellow used to say that we are constantly looking for the book it is necessary to read next. On torture, this is it.” (Times Higher Education Supplement “Book of The Week”). Reviews in San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Telegraph (UK), Oregonian, and other sources can be found here: http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/rejali/rejali/torture-democracy.html

Book: Approaches to Violence (Forthcoming Princeton University Press, 2008) I present the main qualitative orientations to the study of violence and examine how these orientations shape the ways researchers fashion answers in the study of particular kinds of violence.

Book: Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in Modern Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994). Paperback, 1994. Selected for Questia E-Book, 2000; See http://www.questia.com. Reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement, Middle East Journal, Journal of Contemporary Asia, The Historian, The American Anthropologist, and Contemporary Sociology. Feature review in the Persian language Irannameh, which is the main intellectual journal in the Iranian diaspora; reprinted in two Persian language magazines with circulations of over 20,000 in Europe, North America, and Australia. Portions translated into Farsi, Portuguese and Spanish, including in the Iranian paper Hamshahri (2006).

Chapter in Book: “Coerced Information as Truth and Memory,” in Folter: Politik und Technik des Schmerzes, ed. Wolf Burkhardt, Karin Harrasser and Thomas Macho (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Forthing Fall 2007).

Article: “Torture Makes the Man,” South Central Review 24.1 (Spring 2007). [Explores the perception implicit in much torture apology that “democracy makes us weak” and torture is the cure for such weakness.]

Chapter in Book: "Whom Do You Trust? What Do You Count On?" in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future (Princeton University Press, Forthcoming 2004) [Orwell and How to Resist Torture.]

Article: “Friend and Enemy, East or West: Political Realism in the work of Usama bin Ladin, Carl Schmitt, Niccolo Machiavelli and Kai Ka’us ibn Iskandar.” Historical Reflections 3 (2004). [How does one choose one’s friends and identify enemies? A critique of modern realists using classical realist thinkers.]

Article: “Torture as a Civic Marker: Solving a Global Anxiety with a New Political Technology.” Journal of Human Rights 2:2 (June 2003): 153-171.

Article: "Electric Torture: A Global History of a Torture Technology," Connect: art.politics.theory.practice (June 2001): 101-109

Article: "Studying a Practice: An Inquiry into Lapidation" Critique: Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (Spring 2001): 67-100 [Critical study of legal, cultural, and religious explanations of stoning, offering an alternative explanation for its origins and persistence today.]


Article: "Ordinary Betrayals: Conceptualizing Refugees Who Have Been Tortured in the Global Village" Human Rights Review (July-September 2000): 8-25. [Critical study of ways in which lawyers, psychologists, states and the United Nations conceptualize torture victims.]

Article and Book Chapter: "After Feminist Analyses of Bosnian Violence" Peace Review (September, 1997). Republished in The Women and War Reader. Edited by Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin. New York: New York University Press, 1998. (Paperback 1998) [Critically examines explanations of ethnic rape.]

Chapter in Book: "How Not To Talk About Torture: Violence, Theory, and Problems of Explanation" in Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays in Extralegal Violence, ed. Martha K. Huggins (New York: Praeger: 1991), pp. 127-144.

Major Review Article: “American Torture Debates” Human Rights Review (forthcoming Spring 2008).

Lloyd Ridgeon, ed. “Religion and Politics in Modern Iran,” Iranian Studies (Forthcoming).

Press

Articles in Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chronicle of Higher Education, Time.com, Slate.com, Salon.com, and The Huffington Post, interviews on ABC News, BBC Newshour, CNN, Talk of the Nation (NPR), All Things Considered (NPR), No Comment (Harpers), Democracy Now, WNYC, and Court TV, as well as commentary on torture in the New York Times and the Washington Post. For recent editorials, media appearances and magazine articles, see Press.

Editorials and Magazine Articles

Articles in Time.com, Slate.com, Salon.com, and The Huffington Post, interviews on ABC News, BBC Newshour, CNN, Talk of the Nation (NPR), All Things Considered (NPR) and Court TV, as well as commentary on torture in the New York Times and the Washington Post.  For recent editorials, media appearances and magazine articles, see  
http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/rejali/rejali/press.html

For recent editorials, media appearances and magazine articles, see Press.

Courses

Syllabi on major articles, courses, and occasional pieces are available at the following URL: http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/rejali/rejali/index.html

Recent Scholarly Activity

Paper on Torture and Democracy, delivered at Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law (cosponsored with Human Rights Watch) (March 12, 2008); Center for Human Rights, John Jay Criminal College (March 13, 2008); Carnegie Council of Ethics (March 13, 2008); University of Washington (April 11, 2008)

Panel Participant, Conference on “Torture Law and War,” University of Chicago Law School Conference (Feb 28-March 1, 2008)

Convocation Lecture, “Torture, Democracy and Our Future,” Centre College, Danville, KY (Feb 25, 2008)

Paper, “Torture and Democracy,” Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies (BCICS), Northwestern University (Feb 27, 2008)

Paper, “The Phenomenon of Torture,” for 30th Anniversary Conference of the Research Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims, October 30, 2007.

Keynote Address, “Approaching Violence,” Conference on Education for Teachers and Non-Profits (“Hope in a Time of Violence”), Lewis and Clark School of Education, November 16, 2007.

Panel Participant, Constitution Day Conference on Torture, Seton Hall University, Newark, NJ (September 17, 2007)

Conference Paper: Conference on “Torture and Our Future,” UC Santa Barbara (May 18, 2007)

Charles E. Gilbert Lecture, "Torture and Democracy: What Americans Learned and Then Forgot During the War on Terror," Swarthmore College (March 29, 2007)

President’s Panel on “Torture,” American Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada (August 11-14, 2006)

Paper,Carnegie Scholar’s Colloquium on “Violence Terrorism and Social Upheaval,” New York, NY (June 5-6, 2006)

Conference Paper, “Torture for Truth and Memory,” Conference on “Codes of Violence in Medial Transformation,” Humboldt University, Berlin (April 29, 2006).

Working Paper Presentation, “Mapping Torture from NGO Data: Problems, Problems and More Problems,” Reed College, Portland (April 6, 2006).

Keynote Lecture, Seminar on “Security and Development: Recent Trends in Social Science,” Nexø, Bornholm, Denmark (October 28, 2005).

Panel Participant, “A Question of Torture,” New York Public Library and Carnegie Council of Ethics (June 1, 2005)

Keynote Lecture:“Torture and Democracy,”Presented at the Workshop on “Studies of Order, Violence and Exclusion,” Danish Institute for International Studies, Research Network on Crime and Violence (Tisvilde, Denmark; September 23, 2004).

Conference Paper:“Torture, Democracy and War,”Presented at the Workshop on “Techniques of Violence in Civil War,” Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO, Oslo, Norway, August 21, 2004).

For all scholarly activity, see “Scholarly Activity” webpage

Television and Radio Appearances

Expert Review of Testimony of Abdul Rahim al Janko, Guantanamo detainee (2007).

Manuscript Reviewer for Political Theory (2007), Oxford University Press (2004), Princeton University Press (2003), Harvard University Press (2002).

External Evaluator for Tenure: York University, Canada (Islamic Studies, 2000); Sarah Lawrence College, NY (Religion, 1997); University of California, San Diego (Sociology, 1995)

For all expert activity and professional services, see “Scholarly Activity” webpage