At the Company Christmas Party: An Iranian Horror Story.

[NNadir]

The story is not about violence, but about American policy under the Orange Pedophile:

Recently my company hired a scientist of Iranian birth (and nationality) to address use of a very advanced mass spectrometer featuring a tool known as "ion mobility spectrometry." I read a few of the guy's publications before interviewing him, and my immediate response was "We should hire this guy."

He's a very gracious guy, very smart, and our scientific discussions are of the nature that I have always sought, a guy who can teach me things as we work together to solve our client's problems, who is not relying on me to teach him but nonetheless respecting my knowledge and experience.

We really don't have too many personal discussions in my office, a few, but not many.

He has no family here, and only casual friends he made during postdocs in the US. He came to our Christmas party, where he met my wife, and the senior management, including the defacto owner of the company (an investor) and the CEO and President joined us.

Because of the noise at the party, and the fact that other people were involved in conversations across the big table, my wife and I spent the majority of our time talking to the new guy.

I asked about his family, and he told me his mother and sister still live in Iran, and he is afraid to visit them, since he may not get back in the United States, might even be arrested by ICE although he has a legal visa to work here.

Then he told me about his brother, who is apparently a literary scholar in now graduate school. He now lives and works in Toronto, in the civilized country to our North of our barbarous, now shithole, country.

Here's the horror story: His brother was accepted to graduate school at Stanford and Yale. The latter school informed him that if he joined their program, they would consider him on a fast track for a faculty position upon completing his Ph.D., they were so impressed with his work as an undergraduate.

Did he go to Yale? Did he go to Stanford?

He wanted to do so, obviously preferring Yale, but he couldn't. The reason? He couldn't get a visa to come to the United States.

There you have it, our country deprived of a brilliant young mind - surely not the only one in this category - because our country is being run by ignorant bigots with no worthy education, sexist, racists freaks led by an orange pedophile and convicted felon.

I regard this as a horror story, and I will not apologize for regarding as so, despite its lack of blood and gore.

My scientist friend despises the Iranian government, says that it does not represent his people, who very much want to live lives connected with warmth and good will toward the rest of the world.

I hope we can keep him. We need him. He's a picture of excellence.

Things like this break my heart; that governments exist here and elsewhere that constrain people from expressing love of humanity, art, science, and the world of deeper thought and honor.

I wish you all the happiest of holidays.

[J_William_Ryan]

1. "My scientist friend despises the Iranian government, says that it does not represent his people..."

The same is true of the American government, we know how he feels.

[tblue37]

2. I had a brilliant Iranian student in my college class in 2017 Spring term after the Muslim ban was instituted. She was

afraid to visit her family during summer break b/c she figured she wouldn't be allowed back to school.

She was so good a student that she had received several offers from other schools, so we lost her after that term--she went home for summer break, and then to a Canadian university when Fall semester rolled around.

[BurnDoubt]

3. Madness.

[Harker]

4. The most frightening horror stories don't need blood and gore to be effective..

I wish you peace. You already have good will.

[MustLoveBeagles]

5. That's sad

How far we have fallen.

[markodochartaigh]

6. In the case of

Iran, we fell after we shot ourselves in the foot by deposing Mossadegh.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Scientists organized to help other scientists escape from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy -- we need to do the same now.

Years ago, I read a popular history of the IAS with a title something like "The Flexner-Hitler Garden of the Lonely Wise" whose title I cannot recall with 100% certainty, and I have no idea what publication it was in. It described how Jewish scientists in Europe were recruited to various positions in the US after Hitler ascended (if that's the word) to power, with the IAS assuming something of a leading role (they had already recruited Einstein and von Neumann, so they were kind of in the spotlight in that regard) after considerable initial reluctance -- their original founding principle had been to recruit American scientists, after all. Perhaps some enlightened administration in Latin America or Europe could now benefit from Trmp's democidal urges to "Make America Great Again" while eliminating every principle, ideal, and faction that ever made it great.

I can't see Iran being so forward-looking, but I'm sure if any nuclear scientists are pushed out of the country Iran would be happy to take them.

If Saudis, Qataris, Bahrainis etc. are still looking for places to invest their money, our situation could benefit them. I see no shortage of ads for scientific positions in the Persian Gulf countries as it is.

[Wonder Why]

8. It's a horror story for our country. All those neclear scientists in WW2 would have ended up in Germany or USSR.

[Joinfortmill]

9. Happy Holidays. We will surmount this horror of vulgarity

known as magats.

[Ohioboy]

10. A line from your post that stands out to me

It's the part where you point out how your excellent coworker says the Iranian government 'does not represent his people'. That is unfortunately becoming more and more the way a lot Americans feel about their government as well.

We are becoming no better than any of the world's other repressive regimes.

You are right to call this a horror story.