Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi Lecture

Nearly thirty years before she became the first Iranian, the first Shia and the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Prize, Ebadi was Iran's first woman judge to preside over a legislative court. A supporter of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ebadi nonetheless was stripped of her judgeship and of her license to practice law when conservative clerics prevailed in their interpretation of Islam as forbidding legal practice by women. In 1992, Ebadi succeeded in regaining her law license. She currently is a lecturer in law at the University of Tehran, a campaigner for legal and human rights reform, a frequent defense counsel for Iranian liberals and dissidents and plaintiff's counsel for victims of civil and human rights abuses. Lecture is free and open to the public.