In 2011, after a decade of work in advocacy and labor unions, I became a sociologist, professor, and independent scholar. My specialties are Iranian antisemitism, women, and radicalization and hate on social media. I recently authored Social Media Victimization – Theories and Impacts of Cyberpunishment (Lexington Books, December 2022). My book uses Quest for Significance theory by Kruglanski, et al. and Terror Management Theory by Ernest Becker, to explain the potential of today’s popular social media platforms to radicalize everyone. My theory recognizes that moral outrage drives “cancel culture”, and online conflict is caused by existential fear that drives any and all of us to punish others on social media. I call this process cyberpunishment.
I earned degrees from the University of Maryland Global Campus (BS, 2002) in Computer and Information Science, Catholic University of America (MA, 2011) in Sociology – with a Certificate of International Social Development (CISD) – and George Mason University (PhD, 2018) in Public Sociology, specializing in immigration studies.
Born to parents who were children during WWII and the Holocaust, and having lived as a child through the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the common thread throughout my research centers around the rights of minorities, especially the Jewish people.
After seeing first hand the persecution of Iran’s successful, emancipated Jews of Iran to the Islamist revolution, I have chosen to concentrate on scholarship and policy to fight against global antisemitism.
I am currently an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer of Sociology at the American University in Washington, D.C., and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP).