Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University's International Policy Center and the director of the Dialogue Project. She has taught Western literature at Iran's University of Tehran, Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai University. After refusing to wear the veil at the University of Tehran in 1981, she was expelled. She received a teaching fellowship from Oxford University in 1994, and she and her family immigrated to the United States in 1997. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, as well as appearing on a variety of radio and television shows. Her husband and two children reside with her in Washington, D.C.