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
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."