In the summer of 1978, before the Iranian Revolution dominated every conversation, I was introduced to the newly appointed chair of the department at the University of Minnesota. I was just beginning my doctorate in Islamic literature and still learning the unspoken rules of academic life — rules that would later shape how an American generation misread Iran, and, eventually, itself.

When I met the new chair of the department, I felt a wave of fear that surprised me. Sweat ran down my back. I was not trained as a psychoanalyst yet so I did not know I was having a panic attack. I could not explain it, but I sensed immediately that I lacked the skills — intellectual and political — to engage him directly. I excused myself and only later understood that I had experienced a full panic attack. At the time, I knew only that something in the room felt dangerous in a way I could not yet name.

Several months later, I attended a cocktail party at the home of a prominent professor of Spanish. The occasion was celebratory: the new chair had arrived, and the department was marking the moment. History, however, had its own plans. The Iranian Revolution was the dominant topic of conversation. Ayatollah Khomeini had returned to Tehran. Events were unfolding in real time, and the room buzzed with confidence and certainty. I mostly listened.

What struck me was not the intensity of interest in Iran, but the framework through which it was being discussed. The revolution was read almost entirely through a Marxist and post-colonial lens. The Shah was described as a Western puppet. The uprising was framed as anti-imperialist liberation. Religion appeared largely as surface detail — useful for mobilization perhaps, but ultimately secondary to economic and political forces presumed to do the real work. Something about this made me deeply uncomfortable. At the time, I could not fully explain why.

I had encountered........

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