of Refugees International. In 2018, Hakakian was also a scholar at Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. In 2021, she joined the board of the Connecticut Immigrant & Refugee Coalition as an honorary member. She is also a permanent member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has been a featured speaker at many colleges and universities as well as she has appeared on CBS This Morning, PBS' Now with Bill Moyers, The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, among others. In 2009, Hakakian spoke at the University of California at Berkeley, detailing her life from Iran to the United States and discussing the parallels between Muslim and Jewish youths in reconciling “modernity and religious identity.” Professor Harry Kreisler, the host of the UCBK's interview series, later published a selection of his best interviews in a book called Political Awakenings: Conversations with History, including Hakakian's interview. He called Hakakian "one of the most important activists, academics, and journalists of our generation.” Works Books Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown) begins in 1974 and ends in 1984, the ten years during which Iran transformed. Hakakian carefully chooses a handful of personal stories which illuminate the greater stories she wishes to tell, namely how the lives of women, Jewish community, and secular Iranians changed in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. The book was a Barnes & Noble's Pick of the Week, Ms. magazine Must Read of the Summer and Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year. It won the Persian Heritage Foundation's 2006 Latifeh Yarshater Book Award, and is the 2005 winner of the Best Memoir by the Connecticut Center for the Book. It also received an Elle magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2004. In granting the award, one Elle magazine jury member Danielle Bauter said, “Hakakian eloquently captures her childhood with words that create a dreamscape in the mind’s eye. From the perspective of a teenager coming to terms with her own identity and the changing times around her, she juxtaposes the innocence of her youth with the fierceness of Iran’s political climate. I became very involved with her journey, and the beauty of her writing drew me into her story — so much so that I will think about this book long after having finished it.” The playwright Katori Hall in her