Film Screening: To Light a Candle

To Light a Candle
A film by Maziar Bahari (co-writer of Rosewater, with Jon Stewart)
Film:  7:00 p.m.; panel discussion:  8:00 p.m.

Sponsored by the Baha'i Chaplaincy at Harvard and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism

 Panelists:

• Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
• Farnaz Fassihi, Nieman Fellow
• Diane Moore, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Divinity School and Fellow, Center for the Study of World Religions
• Mojdeh Rohani, Boston University School of Social Work and Baha'i Institute of Higher Education

Summary:

The Baha'is are a religious minority in Iran.  The Islamic regime bans the Baha'is from studying and teaching in Iranian universities.

But the Baha'is do teach, and they do study.  Since 1987 the Baha'is started BIHE, an underground university with hundreds of students in Iran, and dozens of teachers in Iran and around the world.  Through powerful interviews, exclusive secret footage shot by citizen journalists, rare archival material and dramatic letters written by a Baha'i prisoners currently in jail in Iran, To Light a Candle shows how a small minority has defied the brutal systematic religious persecution through non-violent resistance and educating their youth.