He received his Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University where his dissertation focused on the efforts of the Islamic Republic of Iran to produce the New Islamic Citizen through schooling. He is currently working on a study for the United States Institute of Peace on the changing role of student movement groups in Iran since the 2009 Green Movement, as well as the ways in which the university admissions process has become part of the state’s strategy for securing the quiescence of Iranian youth. He has lived and worked in Chile and Brazil, as well as in Qatar where he taught comparative politics at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. An accidental reporter and participant in the Iranian Green Movement, he has written for The Atlantic, NYT, Time, Al Jazeera, and others.