Davar Ardalan

[Rasputin]

Davar Ardalan is a Supervisory Producer for Morning Edition, making many of the creative decisions that shape the changing daily broadcast. Some of those decisions must be made in an instant, during a live broadcast. Other decisions require elaborate coordination and planning - such as shaping Morning Edition broadcasts from Baghdad, New Orleans, and the Vatican.

Ardalan began as a temporary production assistant in July 1993 and a year later she moved to a full-time production assistant position at Weekend Edition Sunday. After spending nearly twelve years as a field producer, teaming with NPR hosts and correspondents to report on topics including girls in New York gangs, gambling in Atlantic City casinos, and Islam in cyberspace, Ardalan transitioned to Morning Edition in January 2005. Over her time at NPR, Ardalan's profiles have included the actor Paul Newman, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and the World Wrestling Federation's "Mankind."

In April of 2002, Ardalan and NPR's Jacki Lyden received a Gracie award from the American Women in Radio and Television for the NPR documentary "Loss and Its Aftermath," the story of Israeli and Palestinian parents speaking about the deaths of their children in the conflict.






Her full name, Iran Davar Ardalan, inspired the 2004 NPR/American Radioworks series, "My Name is Iran." In the stories she explored the country for which she was named, tracing her Iranian heritage and her own experiences after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The struggle of a nation as reflected in her family's story led to a memoir to be published by Henry Holt in January 2007.

Ardalan's career in the American media began in 1991 at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, N.M., A year later, she made the switch to radio as a reporter at KUNM-FM in Albuquerque. She produced award-winning cultural and news stories on health and environmental concerns in Los Alamos for which she won first place in documentaries from the Associated Press in New Mexico.

Ardalan earned a B.A. in communications and journalism from the University of New Mexico. She was born in San Francisco and has also lived and worked in Iran as a television newscaster. Ardalan attended elementary and middle school at Iranzamin International School in Tehran and graduated from Brookline High School in Brookline, M.A. Away from NPR, she is the mother of four.

[Rasputin]

Between Two Worlds: 'My Name Is Iran'

Author Iran Davar Ardalan, a producer for Morning Edition, first began telling her story about Iran in a series that aired on the radio program three years ago.

Her new memoir, My Name Is Iran, tells the story of three generations of Iranian-American women, who move back and forth between the countries and the cultures.

When Ardalan was just an infant, her family traveled to Iran, where she lived for years. She dropped the name "Iran" after the 1979 Iranian Revolution brought her back to America.

By the age of 18, Ardalan had returned to Iran to embrace the revolution, and an arranged marriage. She became a news anchor, reading content that reflected the sentiment in Iran at the time: anti-West, anti-America, anti-Israel.

Eventually, she became disillusioned and felt that the Islamic revolution was superficial and hypocritical.

"Right now," she says, "I feel more American. That is because I feel Iran is still in turmoil. It's been in the West where I have been able to step back and find myself, but I am finally proud to say my name is Iran."

I was six months pregnant and translating at a medical conference when an African American Muslim living in Iran came up to me and told me about auditions for a new English news program at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. A week later, I was sitting in front of a camera and crew. I got the job of anchoring the four p.m. news every day.

Every day around two p.m. a yellow jeep from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting would come to my apartment to pick me up for work. I was driven up Vali Asr Boulevard, formerly known as Pahlavi, to get to the station, which was located on top of the hill. Built in the 1970s during the Shah's time, it housed many of Iran's most famous news anchors, producers, and engineers, who had decided to continue broadcasting the news even though it was clear they were not fond of the Islamic regime. You could detect a certain rebellion in the way the women working behind the scenes wore their head scarves, ensuring that a bit of hair showed at their forehead. The atmosphere at the station was very collegial until the managing editor and the director of news appeared, both of whom were at some level connected or related to the ruling clerics and founders of the revolution.

The English broadcast newsroom consisted of one room with a large oval-shaped table in the center shared by translators, anchors, and production assistants. Our news director was responsible for pulling wire copy from the noon newscast aired in Persian, which would then be translated and handed to us to read verbatim. We had no say in the editorial content of the material we were given. For Judy, the newsroom was not as glum or foreboding as it was for me. Perhaps because she was older and fully American, she was able to cautiously laugh and joke with the young translators. I felt as though I was being watched more carefully, especially by the senior news managers, whose offices were down the hall.

On camera, we came across as just a bunch of amateurs trying to put on a fifteen-minute news program. We were stiff as boards sitting there in our scarves, afraid to smile or show any type of human emotion. We were perhaps an excellent propaganda point for the regime. Article 175 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran says, "The freedom of expression and dissemination of thoughts in the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran must be guaranteed in keeping with the Islamic criteria and the best interests of the country." Furthermore, the constitution indicates that the head of the broadcasting station would be appointed and/or dismissed by the supreme leader and that "a council consisting of two representatives each of the President, the head of the judiciary branch, and the Islamic Consultative Assembly shall supervise the functioning of this organization."

The idea was to promote to an English-speaking audience not only the accomplishments of the Islamic Republic but also to highlight news from the Islamic world. This news was of particular interest to those Iranians who continued to wage an ideological battle with the United States following the revolution. With the Iran-Iraq war in full force, the news often began with the number of Iranians killed or wounded by Iraqi chemical weapons.

In February of 1984, Iran's foreign minister spoke at a disarmament conference in Geneva and reported at least forty-nine instances of Iraqi chemical attacks in dozens of border regions resulting in the deaths of 109 Iranians and the wounding of hundreds of others. It was at this time that Iran began a massive offensive toward Basra, Iraq, where it was alleged that poison gas was being used by Saddam. Eventually, the United Nations sent a team of experts to Iran and verified and condemned the use of chemical weapons by Iraq.

In addition, in 1984, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that 160 wounded soldiers in hospitals in Tehran "presented a clinical picture whose nature leads to the presumption of the recent use of substances prohibited by international law." That statement by the ICRC was followed by a United States State Department statement that said: "The U.S. Government has concluded that the available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons." But Iraq continued to dismiss these international condemnations, calling them "political hypocrisy."

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]