Iranian Exile Mahnaz Afkhami Gives Voice to Women Exiles Worldwide

Mahnaz Afkhami, executive director of the Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), and Azar Nafisi, professor of English Literature at Tehran's Tabatabai University discuss this weekend's Sisterhood is Global conference in Washington D.C., a symposium addressing issues such as cross-cultural education and women's rights on a global scale. Afkhami has written a substantial manual for women's rights education in Muslim countries. Nafisi has conducted ongoing workshops in Iran, one of six SIGI world workshop sites, on women, their identities, and their rights.

There was Ali G, Borat and Bruno -- and now, in The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen has a new character to add to his repertoire: the capricious ruler of an oil-rich country who travels to the U.N. to assert his right to have nuclear warheads.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter recently traveled across the Himalayan Mountains with a group of Buddhist monks and nuns who were fleeing from persecution by the Communist Chinese government in Tibet. Some of them had been imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese. If caught, they would be sent back to prison and tortured. During their 14-day trek they experienced frost-bite, snow blindness, oxygen-thin air, pain, and hunger.