November 4, 2004, marked the 25th anniversary of the hostage crisis in Iran, and the American Studies department wasn’t going to let the date go by unmarked.
A quarter-century after reactionary Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year, key players involved in the crisis, along with Iranian and American scholars, met to discuss the ordeal. Held on November 18 and 19, 2004, the conference was titled Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Retrospectives on the Hostage Crisis in Iran, 1979 – 1981. Presented by the Centre for the Study of the United States and the Toronto Initiative for Iranian Studies, the two-day conference was held at the Munk Centre for International Studies.
On the first day of the conference, John Limbert, president of the American Foreign Service Association and U.S. ambassador to Mauritania, and Bruce Laingen, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and U.S. ambassador to Malta, reflected on their personal experiences as hostages in Iran. Both Laingen and Limbert spoke spiritedly about their 444 days of captivity in Iran, and although both made it quite clear that they held no animosity towards the people of Iran, Bruce Laingen referred to the current regime in Iran as “an aberration-a system that is out of touch with Iran’s people.”
Kenneth Taylor, former Canadian ambassador to Iran, lectured on the unprecedented role that Canada played during the hostage crisis. Canada provided fake Canadian passports to six American Foreign Service employees who had escaped from the embassy, and was able to smuggle the Americans out of Iran after 79 days. For the enormous risks taken by Taylor and by the Canadian government, the former ambassador received the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Order of Canada.
On the second day of the conference, locations changed to several more intimate seminar settings. Speakers on the second day-including Gary Sick of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University and former service member of the National Security Council, and Mansour Farhang, Iran’s first ambassador to the United Nations-focused on the impact of the hostage crisis on US-Iran foreign relations, and on Iran’s foreign and domestic policies. Organizers lamented that although they were trying to organize an opportunity for some of the former hostage-takers to participate in the conference, they were not given permission by the Iranian government to do so.
The importance and timely nature of the event was repeatedly highlighted by both panelists and participants. Due to continuing American sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have not been many opportunities for official cultural or scholarly dialogue, and this has led to more misunderstanding between the two countries. When asked why they thought this event was so important, one of the Iranian participants, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Events like this create dialogue that is long overdue. However, if any meaningful and productive dialogue is to take place, the system in Iran needs to change dramatically.”
