David Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist, was arrested in Tehran on Sunday, October 29, just days after receiving the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s 2023 Brown Democracy Medal.
According to The Guardian, Sotoudeh was arrested at the funeral for Amrita Garawand, a sixteen-year-old Iranian who died from injuries sustained for not wearing a headscarf on public transportation.
The Guardian also reports that Sotoudeh was arrested for not wearing a headscarf at Garawand’s funeral. Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, said she was “violently beaten” during the arrest.
Previously in March of 2019, as reported by CNN, Sotoudeh was arrested for advocating for the rights of women, children, and activists in Iran and sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Up until her recent arrest she was on medical furlough from jail.
In February of 2023, Sotoudeh told CNN that while a brutal state crackdown has succeeded in quieting the demonstrations that gripped the country for months, many Iranians still want regime change. In an exclusive interview from her home in Tehran, she told CNN's Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour that, "the protests have somewhat died down, but that doesn't mean that the people are no longer angry ... they constantly want and still want a regime change. They want a referendum."
As reported by CNN, Sotoudeh is renowned around the world for advocating for the rights of women, and activists in Iran, is currently on medical furlough from jail, after being sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes in March 2019.
Despite her arrests and the threat to her life, Sotoudeh believes that the protest movement must endure and will endure:
"Official authorities are trying to flex their muscles more, they're trying to show their strength a lot more than before, but civil disobedience continues and many women courageously take to the streets.”
The Brown Democracy Medal spotlights and honors the best work being done to advance democracy in the United States and internationally. Under the award program, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy recognizes practical innovations, such as new institutions, practices, technologies or organizations that advance the cause of democracy along with theoretical advances that enrich philosophical or empirical conceptions of democracy.
Sotoudeh’s recent award of the Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, marked the award's tenth year. Sotoudeh has dedicated her legal career to representing opposition activists in Iran, minors facing unfair sentences and women who protested Iran’s mandatory hijab law. Her clients have included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and pro-democracy activist Heshmat Tabarzadi.
“I am deeply touched by the love and kindness that’s behind the Brown Democracy Medal,” Sotoudeh said. “Those of us who are working for democracy in Iran are not doing anything that’s particularly exceptional or distinguished. What is exceptional are the obstacles we’re confronting in Iran.”
Sotoudeh is also a longtime opponent of the death penalty. She co-founded the organization Campaign for Step By Step Abolition of the Death Penalty in 2013 to advocate for legislation that would abolish capital punishment in Iran. In 2022, she received the Robert Badinter Award at the 8th World Congress Against the Death Penalty.
McCourtney Institute for Democracy Director Michael Berkman and Managing Director Chris Beem condemned Sotoudeh’s arrest.
“Just last week, The McCourtney Institute for Democracy celebrated Nasrin’s indefatigable commitment to human rights and the rule of law, as well as her astonishing courage in the face of government brutality,” Berkman said.
Beem added, “We call on people around the world to join us in renouncing Iran's oppression of its citizens, and to stand in solidarity with Nasrin and all those in Iran who fight for freedom and human dignity.”
Sotoudeh's powerful story is told in the documentary “Nasrin” produced by Jeff Kaufman and Marcia S. Ross and narrated by Academy Award winner Olivia Colman. The film can be viewed on Amazon Prime.
The documentary is an immersive portrait of Sotoudeh’s remarkable resilience in the work she does for the women’s rights movement in helping political prisoners.
With an original song by Tony Award-winning composers Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and performed by four-time Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo, the documentary was filmed in Iran by women and men who risked arrest to make this film.
Sotoudeh’s courage is truly remarkable.
Learn more about the documentary at nasinfilm.com
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.