Thread by @yarbatman

1. I spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about #Iran. This has a lot to do with meeting Dr. Ehsan Yarshater when I was a high school junior. I am so pleased with the news of a $10 million gift to secure his legacy.
news.columbia.edu/content/1983

2. Back in 2009, I had a vague idea that I wanted to go to @Columbia. Good school + New York seemed enough justification. But my grandmother recommended I go see Dr. Yarshater, an old friend, to learn more about the university.

3. It wasn't the most logical advice. I don't think my grandmother was really aware that Yarshater had not taught for many, many years and that he'd probably have little practical advice for a prospective undergraduate. But I had no idea either, so I gamely traveled to NY.

4. I arrived to his offices at Riverside Drive knowing that I was very fortunate he had made the time, but not really knowing the immense privilege it would be to meet him. Soft-spoken, in a perfectly pressed white shirt, and surrounded by books, Yarshater commanded my attention.

5. He let me do most of the talking. As I babbled, I remember suddenly realizing that asking questions about college was a *huge* waste of this meeting. Clearly, this was someone of whom I should be asking bigger questions, the biggest questions! I have never felt more naive.

6. At some point I took a presentation out of my bag. I had spent the last few months looking into #Iran's tobacco control policies and the prevalence of smoking (how that started is its own story). I had hoped this would at least prove something of my worthiness for the occasion

7. I should add that at this point I was still under the delusion that I would study economics at Columbia. My academic interest in Iran was minimal. I had never even traveled there. This made the meeting with Yarshater even more improbable.

8. I returned home not really sure what to make of the meeting. I knew nothing more about Columbia and I hadn't really taken the opportunity to ask Yarshater about his life's work. It felt like I had squandered the opportunity. But a couple of weeks later that changed.

9. I received an email from Yarshater formally inviting me to contribute an article for the Iranica on the subject of "Smoking in Iran." He had read my presentation on tobacco control and very generously believed I might be up to the task of writing such an entry.

10. The email added, "Incidentally, you will be the youngest person to be invited to write an Encyclopaedia entry." This went to my head, but in a good way. The encouragement from Yarshater pushed me into a field where I could make contributions even at a young age.

11. I arrived at Columbia a year later and decided to pursue political science and Middle Eastern studies. I began to bend nearly every essay assignment towards Iran. My final paper for a political economy in fall of freshman year was on smoking in Iran.

12. Emboldened by the Iranica commission, I submitted that paper to the journal Iranian Studies while I was working on the Iranica entry. The political economy paper was published in 2012: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

13. Later that year, my Iranica entry on Smoking in Iran was also published, following much needed edits and revisions suggested by the excellent editors of the encyclopedia:
iranicaonline.org/articles/smoki…

14. In 2014, I published a paper on the social history of smoking in #Iran which was written in a seminar taught by Lawrence Potter, himself a great scholar of Iran and the Persian Gulf.
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

15. Since then, #Iran has become a larger and larger part of my work, both in academia and in the business of media. Today I trace back the privilege of even believing I can do what I do to the meeting on Riverside Drive and Dr. Yarshater's inexplicable trust.

16. In a beautiful 2011 @nytimes profile, Dr. Yarshater described his work ethic thusly:

"That was when I realized I was suffering from a kind of disease," he said with a smile. "If something is to be done, I have a feeling that I should start doing it."

nytimes.com/2011/08/13/boo…

16. I am immensely grateful to Dr. Yarshater.

I realize now that during that meeting I caught something of his "affliction," as have many others who have had the opportunity to meet him or simply to engage with his immense scholarship.

His is a legacy to protect and cherish.