SF State Conference on Iranian Diaspora Includes LGBTQ Community

BAY AREA REPORTER -- SFSU’s distinguished chair at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies, Persis M. Karim, said including queer speakers at the conference was “a natural symptom of thinking about the kinds of communities, identities and questions that are part of any community that has relocated in a new context.”

“There are a lot of lesbian and gay people who have come to the West to seek asylum and build their lives here that might be perhaps not possible in Iran,” the 56-year-old straight ally said. “There are important identities proliferating in new spaces like San Francisco Bay Area, Canada or Europe.”