That’s how it is for me when I’m learning, when I’m helping someone articulate a vision, or when I’m turning a tangled idea into an operable system. I’ve always been good at connecting things that appear unrelated at first glance. Arabic gave me that sensitivity to structure and nuance. Music trained me to navigate complexity while holding pattern. (No — I am not Arab. I’m Persian, from Fars. But Arabic, like music, shaped the architecture of my mind in ways I couldn’t unlearn if I tried.)

One of the most honest ways to uncover your core passion is through the Japanese notion of ikigai — not as a poster or a worksheet, but as a slow excavation. It is deeply personal work. I don’t advocate for self-help as an industry. Yet I’ve spent years helping myself understand why I’m drawn to the things I’m drawn to. And eventually, the pattern became unmistakable:
I am built to help others understand themselves, their ideas, their work, and their meaning — not from a distance, but from within their process.

I’ve been doing this for most of my life. It just didn’t have a name, a shape, or a structure before.

But here’s the problem I keep seeing, especially in founders:
We spend half of our life working, and if the work is not meaningful, then half of our life becomes collateral damage — sacrificed so that we can “live” the other half. That is not living. That is an agreement with mediocrity.

The crisis is not laziness or lack of ideas. Most people are not stuck because they are incapable — they are stuck because the complexity of execution overwhelms them. They’re alone. They lack structure, a thinking partner, or a system that connects their talent to a real-world path. Many founders have ideas that are half-baked, delayed, or perpetually postponed because they can’t see the path from possibility to implementation.

And if you are reading this and you feel that tension — that sense that it shouldn’t be this way — then yes, we share something essential.
Misfits recognize each other.

I built SSStudio precisely for this. Not as a consultancy, not as a theoretical lab, but as a hands-on system. I work with founders and organizations in the trenches. I help them articulate their idea, design the structure, and move from abstraction to execution. I invest in ideas that are brilliant and feasible but under-resourced. I don’t want dependency. I want to help you become independent, equipped, and capable of carrying your vision without me.

This is a collaboration — not a transaction.
And here is my invitation:

Explore SSStudio’s ad.Venture Founders’ Journey Academy. Read, wander, question. Tell me what resonates and what doesn’t. Help me refine my clarity just as I help you refine yours. Knowledge grows when it is in motion, when it is shared, when it is questioned by intelligent misfits who refuse to accept a half-life.

If you feel the pull of that, then we’re already in conversation.

I don’t read it as a dismissal of stability.
In fact, I value stability. I crave predictability. I love calendars, structure, and the quiet order they bring to a chaotic world. This is not an argument against any of that.

What I hear in Naval’s sentence is something more subtle:
the recognition that stability, when internalized too deeply, can become a kind of gravitational field.
Some of us feel that pull more intensely than others.

It’s not that monthly income is harmful.
It’s that, for certain people, it can slowly reshape who they allow themselves to become.

The truth is: many people genuinely thrive within the rhythms of a structured, salaried life, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of the most grounded, reliable, and meaningful contributions in society come from those who choose that path with intention.

But there is another group, a smaller one, who feel something else stirring beneath the surface. A kind of restlessness. A faint signal. A sense that what they’re doing is safe, but not theirs.

These are the people I’m speaking to.

Not to convince them of anything,
but to acknowledge them.

Because for this group, the salary isn’t the problem, the dependence is.
The predictability they appreciate becomes the very thing that holds them back from what they quietly know they’re meant to explore.

And here’s the hard truth:
Most people will never step outside that gravitational field.
Not because they don’t want to, but because the collective script of “stay where it’s safe” is too loud, too rational, too socially rewarded.

So I’m writing for the others
the ones who feel the pull yet can’t name it,
the ones who sense they’re drifting away from what they once imagined for themselves,
the ones who know they could build something but don’t yet know how.

Maybe we can recognize each other in these words.
Maybe we can help one another break the pattern,
not recklessly, not abruptly,
but consciously.

Not to reject stability,
but to stop mistaking it for destiny.

If you’re one of those people, consider this an invitation, or maybe just a quiet signal, that you’re not alone. And perhaps, together, we can create the kind of support network that makes stepping forward a little less lonely.

To whom it may concern:

The writer, Sajad Sepehri, is an Educational Development & Innovation Strategist at ISSH and a fellow researcher at the VU Amsterdam. An interdisciplinary researcher, he works on system design, EdTech, AI in education and research, knowledge management, and publication infrastructures.

He was awarded a fellowship at the Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee in Rome, for expanding his work on polymathic-generalistic epistemology as a methodological approach for developing Language-Agnostic Knowledge—an attempt to respond to the necessity of an epistemic shift in Open Science and beyond.

First Breath in Rome

The moment I stepped out of the terminal in Rome, the warm air hit me. It was not a comforting warmth; it was a trigger, a sensory key unlocking a traumatic memory of the homeland I have been away from for a lifetime. My host, Giuseppe, led us to the so-called limousine parking area—a name that lingered from another era, now populated by ordinary sedans. Our driver, a man with a mature face and the recklessness of a teenager, sped toward the city at 120 kilometers an hour, tailgating cars until they surrendered. Through the window I saw ancient walls scarred with graffiti, swarms of young people drawn to the night like moths to a flame.

This fellowship was meant to be an intellectual pilgrimage. Yet in those first hours I was consumed by homesickness. A part of me remained in Tirana, a part with my family in the Netherlands, and another part—aching and persistent—in Shiraz, the city I have been away from for many years. The next morning, I made a video call to my wife, Nina, to share our ritual of morning coffee. We talked about our son, who hates school just as his father once did. Later, I went searching for a supermarket to buy eggs, oil, and bread—a small act of replication, a way of anchoring myself in a world that felt adrift.

Rome introduced itself as a city with a “slow memory.” Unlike the crisp orderliness of the Netherlands, life here feels layered and deep. History is not locked away in museums; it is sedimented into the very stones, memories recorded slowly on the body of the city itself. This first week was less about libraries or archives than about encounters—conversations that shifted my project more than any manuscript could.

A Confession

I am not a place person, I am a people person. Monuments, ruins, or landscapes do not move me if I stand before them alone. What animates a city for me are its conversations, its dinners, its encounters. That is why in my first week I was eager to meet, to talk, to write—not to wander through the sights. Rome, for me, was never going to be the Colosseum; it was always going to be Cristina, Lorenzo, Federico, Lisa, Ramazan, Ali, Francesca, Lottie, Pamela, Fillipo, and the other faces with whom we had non-verbal communications.

One can distinguish between those who form attachments to landscapes and those whose sense of belonging is mediated through relationships. My orientation is the latter. Perhaps it is because of my status as an atopos1—placeless, alien, exiled. Belonging, for me, has always been compensated through people, never through soil or stone. That is why I feel Albanian, I feel Iranian, I feel Kurd, I feel even Italian—and no one has the authority to police that feeling.

From the political view Agamben in his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare life explained it. Exile and statelessness cast me as homo sacer, life reduced to its minimum, unprotected, unrecognized. But that very exclusion created the strangeness of atopos: the vantage point of never fitting, of seeing connections others overlook. This is what I call “Life On the Edges”. What is political deprivation in one register, becomes philosophical fecundity2 in another. My belonging has never been secured by soil or passport; it has been remade through people, through encounters, through relation itself.

This does not mean I am numb to places. I am filled with amazement, awe, thought, and joy by history, by heritage, by stones, by bridges. But for me these feelings are never solitary—they are always tethered to relation. To stand before a monument with Nina is not the same as standing there alone; her presence transforms stone into memory. To sit at a historical piazza with a cup of the best coffee of my life3 is not just scenery, it is a relationship—with the act of writing, with thought itself. When I write, I am in my own company. Again, there is a relationship. As Edward Casey writes in Getting Back into Place, place is experienced through memory, body, and relation. I could not agree more. Rome is doing exactly that to me—through the incredible people I meet, the foods I eat, and the words I read or write while looking at its historical stones. I am becoming Italian4.

1. I Found a Treasure, and It Was a Person

My first full day was spent at the Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee (ILIESI). There I met Cristina Marras, the institute’s Research Director. From the first words we exchanged, I felt an exhilarating sense of recognition. We stood on different banks of the same river, yet somehow spoke the same language.

For years, I had been developing ideas about knowledge systems, intuitive and feasible, but lacking formal grounding. Cristina introduced me to her work on pragmatic modeling and the constitutive role of metaphors in organizing knowledge. I’ll write a review of her book soon. It was as if she had handed me the precise epistemological framework I had been tentatively reaching toward in the shadow.

I left the institute convinced I had found a treasure—a treasure named Cristina Marras.

That evening, in autumn rain, we picked up an authentic Italian pizza. It was so profoundly different from every counterfeit “Italian pizza” I had ever tasted that it felt like another philosophical revelation: even pizza can reveal the gap between imitation and reality. Coffee has a similar situation. However, I must admit that I am incredibly proud of the Albanian coffee.

2. A Language’s “Flaw” Can Be Its Greatest Strength

On my second day I met Lorenzo Giovannetti, a philosopher whose work on Plato has earned recognition from the International Plato Society. He teaches at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” and his path winds through Rome, Oxford, Tübingen, Sussex, and beyond—a life steeped in Greek thought and its afterlives.

We spoke of the Persian pronoun او (oo). From a computational standpoint, it is “flawed”: it carries no gender and can mean either “he” or “she.” In Cristina’s perspective, it is inadequate, and this inadequacy presents an opportunity for meaning-making. Lorenzo and I agreed, what one framework sees as a bug, another recognizes as richness. Persian poetry thrives on this ambiguity, suspending gender and letting love exist beyond categories. For centuries, this single pronoun has kept alive questions no grammar book could resolve.

This insight reinforced what I have argued: a multilingual knowledge system cannot be reductionist. It must embrace ambiguities, not attempt to sterilize them. It seems that the current Euro-centric notion of multilingualism is disastrously reductionistic.

3. The Most Creative Space Is the One Between Categories

Lorenzo brought another connection. He reminded me of the Greek word atopos—literally “without a place.” He said that Socrates was called atopos, which means absurd, uncategorizable, and placeless.

Pierre Hadot used the concept to highlight Socrates’ unique character as a philosopher who couldn’t quite be “placed” within the social or intellectual conventions of his time

My legal status is “alien.” I was stateless, suspended between nations. My academic work resists belonging to any single discipline. My life unfolds between languages. For many this in-betweenness feels like exile. But I recognize it as a vantage point.

I call it a Polymathic-Generalistic epistemology: the ability to see connections invisible to those rooted firmly inside categories. True creation happens not in the center but on the edges, in those porous spaces where worlds brush against each other. Therefore, the PGE is a methodological approach.

4. Words Are Travelers, and They Collect Souvenirs

One evening, over dinner with Cristina Marras, Ramazan Turgut, Federico Silvestri, and Lisa Reggiani, we ate pizza and supplì and joked about words. (It is impossible to be with Cristina and not talk about words.)

Federico, a brilliant researcher of contemporary philosophy, spoke of Italy, its north-south divides, its economic struggles, its literature. Lisa, a technologist at ILIESI, thoughtful, calm, mostly listening and humble. It was one of those dinners where conversation moves lightly from etymology to politics to jokes, the kind of evening that convinces you philosophy is not confined to conferences and lexicon archives, but thrives in shared meals.

I brought up the word mohabbat (or muhabbet). Its root is Arabic ح ب ب, meaning love. From there it traveled:

• Persian: an act done out of loving and caring.

• Turkish/Ottoman: conversation, dialogue (a friendly one maybe)

How can one word hold absolute love, a loving act, and a chat over tea? Because words are travelers. They collect souvenirs from each culture they pass through, carrying their ghosts into the present.

This is why translation alone is never enough. A robust knowledge system must honor the sediment of meanings without flattening them. What I have been calling a “semi-structured” approach is, I now realize, aligned with Cristina’s middle-out approach—a way to preserve nuance without dissolving into chaos.

In the Language Agnostic Knowledge framework, I aim to expand and conceptualize knowledge through co-creation. Translation, contrary to its current perception as a secondary or derivative act, is not considered such in this framework. It is a form of pragmatic modelling in which a Piece is re-inscribed in a new linguistic and cultural context. This act has a dual role: one part of the original knowledge is necessarily lost, yet at the same time new context and new knowledge are created. Translation is thus an extension of the original, not its dilution. Its attachment and closeness to the original are essential, for it depends upon it; yet it simultaneously expands the epistemic field by producing new meaning. LAK therefore rejects the treatment of translation as second-hand work and affirms its value as co-equal knowledge production.

5. To Build the Future of Knowledge, We Must Talk to the Ancient Greeks

My conversation with Lorenzo circled back to philosophy’s foundations. He described an ancient model of language:

• Plato’s Window in his theory of Forms: the mind, through dialectic, can apprehend reality itself. Language participates, but imperfectly—it points toward truth but can also mislead.

I, on the other hand, was referring to the mirror metaphor, which Leibniz (a Post-Cartesian philosopher) frequently used in his work, as Cristina rightly identifies as among the most recurring metaphors.

• Mirror: Leibniz often speaks of language as a system of signs or symbols (characteristica universalis). Words reflect concepts, which in turn reflect reality. But the reflection is indirect—signs represent ideas, which represent things.

Which metaphor we choose is not trivial. It sets the epistemic architecture for what knowledge can be.

The Labyrinth Ahead

By the end of the week, I felt I was not standing at the start of a straight road but in the mouth of a labyrinth. Every turn promised discovery, every corner a dead end or a new connection.

In a workshop earlier in the week, I had already met Francesca, Lottie, Pamela, and others, each encounter adding another thread to the web. And today, Fillipo Mosca, a philosopher, presented a chatbot project on Wittgenstein’s Oracle. I guess that this project is related to a previous project here. He was so generous to spend time explaining his work, which made me rethink the scale of what is possible with AI. I realized that this possibility is very much dependent on how well a CS graduate can grasp philosophical and epistemic abstraction.

Yet one thought lingered:

universities, with their glacial pace, will never catch up with the storm of AI and the speed of corporate labs. Unless they begin working with small, emerging technology groups—those rare companies that still earn trust through creativity rather than marketing—academic R&D risks becoming an expensive exercise in futility.

The irony of Rome is that in a city of ruins, one feels the pulse of life more vividly than in the sterile offices of “innovation.”

Something important is unfolding here. Perhaps it is only the slow memory of the city teaching me to walk differently. Perhaps it is the conversations, the words, the shared meals. Or perhaps it is the recognition that knowledge itself is a labyrinth (or an ocean!)—and I am already inside.

What happens when the pressing questions of humanities in the digital and AI era collide with the slow memory of an ancient city?

Italians might say, “Don’t worry! Relax!”

Recently, I had the distinct privilege of participating in a workshop at the historic Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) in Rome. This was not a typical academic seminar. Its objective, guided by the thoughtful work of our hosts, was to practice the very principles of Open Science in the process of creating a book about it. The gathering was a living experiment in collaborative knowledge creation, aiming to embody its subject matter. The central figure of our discussion was Francesca Di Donato, a researcher at CNR-ILC, who presented a chapter from her work-in-progress on the visual metaphors that have shaped the Open Science movement. This article is a personal reflection on her incisive presentation and the rich, stimulating discussions that followed. The opportunity for my colleague, Ramazan, and me to join this brilliant group was made possible through a research fellowship and the generous support of Cristina Marras1, whose dedication to the project was tangible. As the workshop unfolded mainly in Italian, it added a rewarding layer of cross-cultural engagement to this intellectual experience. The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of Open Science metaphors as charted by Di Donato and to offer a critical yet pragmatic extension of her final, powerful proposal: the metaphor of the forest.

2. The Metaphorical Ladder: Charting the Visual Language of Open Science

Context and Attribution

Understanding the visual metaphors used to describe Open Science is not merely an academic exercise; it is crucial for grasping the movement’s evolving values, priorities, and cultural assumptions. These images are not just decorative—they shape definitions and reveal the underlying research cultures that produce them. The following intellectual cartography, which traces a clear evolutionary path in the visual language of Open Science, is drawn directly from the meticulous research Francesca Di Donato presented for her forthcoming book. This section serves as a summary of her analysis.

2.2 The Umbrella and the Mushroom

As Di Donato explained, the journey begins with the ‘umbrella’ metaphor, famously introduced by Fecher & Friesike (2013). The umbrella is a man-made artifact, a tool created to serve a specific purpose: to collect and shelter a variety of related concepts under a single, simplifying term. It is an image of utility and consolidation. Yet, as Di Donato demonstrated through examples from communities like Public & Science Sweden, the EOSC-hub project, and Brazil’s FIOCRUZ, what lies under the umbrella varies significantly. Each interpretation reflects the priorities of its respective community, arranging practices like Open Access, Open Data, and Citizen Science in different configurations and hierarchies.

Di Donato then highlighted a significant conceptual shift with the introduction of the ‘mushroom’ metaphor by Eva Méndez. This marked a crucial move away from a man-made artifact toward a natural, living organism. The mushroom is not merely a container for visible practices. Its power lies in introducing the idea of a hidden, submerged system—a root network analogous to an iceberg’s submerged mass. Di Donato detailed its anatomy: the gills (lamelle) represent Citizen Science, and the stem (fusto) symbolizes standards and governance. Crucially, the roots represent the foundational elements of research integrity, infrastructure, and alternative evaluation systems, which are essential for nourishing the visible parts of the organism.

2.3 The Wheel and the Tree

The next step in this metaphorical evolution, Di Donato showed, is the ‘wheel’, developed by Kramer & Bosman (2017). Shifting back to a human invention, the wheel represents Open Science as an infinite, circular research workflow. It maps practices onto different phases of research—from discovery and analysis to publication and outreach—in a continuous loop. As one of humanity’s most important inventions, the wheel metaphor elevates Open Science from a mere collection of practices to a fundamental process, a new engine for knowledge production. Di Donato noted that the wheel also evokes the hermeneutic circle—the interpretive process where understanding a text, or in this case, a research field, requires a continuous movement between the whole and its constituent parts.

This idea of process is further systematized in the ‘taxonomy’ and ‘tree’ metaphors, exemplified by the FOSTER taxonomy. The tree organizes the components of Open Science into a hierarchical structure, bringing order and detail to the ecosystem. However, the tree is laden with deeper historical symbolism. Di Donato powerfully recounted how trees became emblems of resistance and revolution. In the American Revolution, the “Liberty Tree,” an elm in Boston, became a rallying point for resistance. During the French Revolution, a priest named Norbert Pressac replanted an oak as a patriotic symbol, an idea that spread rapidly. Quoting Stefano Mancuso, Di Donato explained the profound symbolism: “Dying or dead nature must be only the emblem of despotism. Conversely, living and productive nature... must be the image of liberty.” This association imbues the Open Science movement with a legacy of radical, systemic change.

2.4 The Graph

The final precursor to the forest is the ‘graph’ metaphor, notably used in a UNESCO (2020) document. A graph is a mathematical structure composed of vertices and arches, a model that immediately evokes the interconnected topologies of the internet and the World Wide Web. As presented by Di Donato, this metaphor powerfully emphasizes three core UNESCO objectives: making knowledge openly available, enhancing collaboration and information sharing, and opening the scientific process itself to actors beyond the traditional scientific community. The graph portrays Open Science not as a static collection or a linear process, but as a dynamic, decentralized network of relationships. This vision of a complex, living network serves as the perfect bridge to Di Donato’s own proposal: the forest.

3. The Forest of Open Science: A New Ecosystemic Vision

Context and Proposal

Francesca Di Donato’s proposed ‘forest’ metaphor is more than just the next step in this progression; it is a sophisticated synthesis that absorbs the strengths of its predecessors. It offers a richer, more dynamic, and more value-laden vision for Open Science, framing it as a living, collaborative, and intelligent ecosystem.

An Inclusive and Collaborative Ecosystem

In Di Donato’s interpretation, the forest seamlessly integrates the most potent elements of previous metaphors. It is a natural organism like the mushroom, its revolutionary roots recall the symbolism of the tree, and its vast, interconnected root system functions as a living graph. She attributes to this forest a series of profoundly positive qualities that align with the highest aspirations of the Open Science movement:

• Collaboration: The forest ecosystem is built on a model of mutual support, as theorized by Kropotkin (1902). Trees are not isolated competitors but members of a vast community connected by a subterranean network that exchanges nutrients, water, and information.

• Inclusivity and Biodiversity: The forest is a collective enterprise where diverse actors contribute to the health of the whole. In this ecosystem, even “dead trees”—completed projects or retired datasets—continue to provide nourishment and structure, fulfilling a vital function.

• Collective Intelligence: Drawing on contemporary plant science, Di Donato describes the forest as a “swarm of swarms.” Individual plants possess a distributed, modular intelligence, and the forest as a whole forms a collective intelligence far greater than the sum of its parts as Ramazan commented in the discussion.

• A Shift in Values: This ecological vision fundamentally changes how we assess value. Citing Mounier (2022), Di Donato argued that the forest metaphor encourages us to move beyond conventional metrics of efficiency and excellence and ask new, more profound questions about our work: “Is it sustainable? Is it inclusive? Is it creative? Is it alive?”

My Reflections

This compelling and beautiful portrayal of the Open Science forest sets a high ideal. However, it is precisely its power that necessitates a critical re-evaluation.

4. A Critical Re-reading: The Inherent Asymmetries of the Forest

Context and Critique

Any potent metaphor risks becoming a romanticized ideal if not grounded in the complexities of reality. During the workshop, I felt compelled to offer a critical perspective, arguing that the true strength of the forest metaphor lies not in its idealism but in its capacity to represent the very real tensions and inequalities that persist within our knowledge ecosystems. A factual examination of a forest reveals it to be a site of structural asymmetry, not purely egalitarian harmony.

Beyond Romanticism: Confronting the “Dark” Forest

To truly serve as a pragmatic tool (I’ve learned a lot during my skimming through the work of Cristina Marras on pragmatic modelling and middle-out approach and the constitutive nature of metaphor), the metaphor must encompass the “darker” aspects of the forest—the realities of competition, exclusion, and inequality. These natural processes offer powerful parallels to the systemic challenges facing the Open Science movement:

• Unequal Resource Distribution: In a real forest, tall canopy trees monopolize sunlight, often starving the understory plants below. Root systems compete fiercely for water and nutrients. This directly mirrors how privileged institutions and Anglophone-centric research dominate the global knowledge landscape, capturing the majority of visibility, funding, and resources.

• Absence of Equal Opportunity: A seed’s survival is heavily dependent on the chance of where it lands. A spot with fertile soil and adequate light allows it to thrive, while an equally viable seed may perish in deep shade. This reflects the systemic barriers and positional advantages in academia, where success is often contingent on pedigree and geography rather than merit alone.

• Exclusion and Competition: Some plant species engage in allelopathy, releasing chemicals to actively suppress the growth of competitors. This is a stark metaphor for the persistent competition for funding and recognition, the gatekeeping practices of established journals, and the institutional rivalries that can stifle collaboration.

• Efficiency Without Fairness: A forest is a remarkably resilient and efficient system, but its efficiency is achieved through brutal cycles of dominance, decay, and regrowth. It is a system of winners and losers. This parallels how the current scientific ecosystem can be highly efficient at producing a massive volume of outputs while failing to be fair or equitable in its methods of evaluation and reward.

Mapping the Gaps in Practice

This critical lens helps synthesize a core problem: the Open Science movement, in its current form, resolves access asymmetry far more effectively than it resolves evaluative asymmetry. We have made great strides in lowering the barriers to reading scientific literature, but the deep-seated asymmetries of recognition, reward, and linguistic privilege persist. The infrastructures, metrics, and incentive structures remain predominantly Anglophone and tilted toward quantitative measures that favor already-dominant institutions. The forest metaphor’s greatest value, therefore, is not in romanticizing openness but in its capacity to make these tensions visible, challenging the status quo and forcing us to confront the gaps between our principles and our practices.

5. Enriching the Metaphor: Towards a Pragmatic and Constitutive Image

Context and Synthesis

For a metaphor to be truly useful, it must move beyond mere description. It must be complex enough to represent reality and robust enough to guide action—to become a constitutive tool for building a better system. The collaborative discussions at the workshop became an exercise in enriching the forest metaphor, layering it with the nuance needed to make it both a map of the present and a guide for the future.

Insights from a Community of Practice

Our breakout groups—a mix of librarians, philosophers, and other researchers—began to annotate Di Donato’s image, adding elements to represent both principles and problems. Our group, among others, proposed several critical additions:

• A frame or boundary around the forest, representing the protecting principles, ethical guidelines, and shared values (like multilingualism and pluralism) that must define and defend the ecosystem.

• Facilitators and unifiers in the sky above—forces of connection and aggregation like bees, wind, and birds, and perhaps even AI represented as an airplane—that pollinate ideas and bridge communities as a sign of openness of the forest to naturalize and integrate artificial intelligences.

• A crack or canyon cleaving the ground, symbolizing the digital divides, resource gaps, and systemic fragmentations that prevent the root network from being truly universal.

In a particularly insightful contribution, my colleague Ramazan invoked the poet Nazim Hikmat2, suggesting that if the individual trees are researchers and institutions, then the “invisible labor” of maintenance, care, and community-building is the glue that binds them into a forest, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Cristina Marras elegantly reframed this concept as the unseen “photosynthesis”—the quiet, essential labor that converts light into energy and nourishes the entire system.

An Argument for Nuance

During our discussion, Francesca voiced a preference for keeping the core image simple. I respectfully disagree, arguing that a pragmatic and constitutive metaphor may require detail and nuance. The Mona Lisa, while a simple portrait of a person, contains infinite, vital details. Similarly, a complex image allows us to identify specific challenges and opportunities. By explicitly visualizing the frame that protects, the canyons that divide, and the pollinators that connect, the metaphor becomes a practical tool. It transforms from an image that simply describes an ideal into one that helps us constitute a more equitable practice by making its gaps, asymmetries, and essential components visible and actionable.

Every metaphor must function as an orienting device. It should momentarily capture the thinker, establish a frame, and provide the scaffolding through which knowledge can be organized. Cristina Marras and others name this the pragmatic operators: the capacity of a metaphor to guide the act of structuring thought. With the forest, one does not need to over-explain in order to achieve initial recognition. The concept is immediately available to human cognition; class and category emerge almost intuitively. What follows are the particularities, the differentiations, the multiple layers of meaning. My argument is that producing a spectrum of images—a simple outline, a moderately detailed sketch, and a fully articulated rendering—introduces variability and negotiability. It acknowledges the multiplicity of perspectives, even the darker, more pessimistic readings of the status quo. This adaptability transforms the forest into an inclusive framework, capable of serving not only as an emblem of idealized openness but also as a pragmatic diagnostic tool.

The framework then resists closure. It remains open, in the spirit of Open Science, to diverse pragmatic interpretations while preserving the integrity of the central metaphor: the forest as an ecosystem with distinctive properties. Within this orientation, detail is not a distraction but a means of enabling the metaphor to act as both descriptive and constitutive. Inspired by Marras’s reading of Leibniz, the forest may function as a mirror—reflecting configurations of knowledge—or as a maze—disclosing the complexities, barriers, and asymmetries embedded within it. This duality is precisely what makes the metaphor effective: it does not freeze meaning but sustains a dynamic play between recognition and exploration.

6. Conclusion: A Personal Reflection on Hope, Pessimism, and the Future

Recapitulation and Personal Duality

The central argument of this reflection is that the forest is a profound and powerful metaphor for Open Science, but only when we embrace its full, un-romanticized complexity. It must contain both the cooperative, life-giving ecosystem we aspire to and the “darker,” asymmetrical realities of competition and exclusion we currently inhabit. The experience of the workshop left me with a deep sense of this duality. On one hand, I was filled with admiration for the passionate, dedicated researchers I met. In an old building that reminded me of my old school, they pour their love into foundational fields like philosophy, linguistics, and epistemology. Between discussions, over the fast coffees that punctuated our breaks, I saw a community dedicated to work whose societal impact is not immediately marketable but is profoundly essential.

On the other hand, I carry a persistent pessimism about the broader injustices of the global knowledge economy, where vast sums are allocated to weapons while these same scholars struggle for funding, and where the academic reward system often feels disconnected from the pursuit of genuine understanding. This workshop crystallized that tension for me: the hope inspired by a small group of brilliant, caring individuals against the backdrop of a deeply flawed global system.

Gratitude and a Look Forward

I am immensely grateful to Francesca Di Donato for sharing her brilliant work and for her inspiring openness to dialogue and critique. My thanks also go to Cristina Marras, Ramazan, and all the participants whose insights enriched the day immeasurably. I eagerly await the publication of Francesca’s book and hope it finds the wide readership and spirited discussion it so clearly deserves.

Ultimately, this experience reinforced my belief that balancing pessimism with hope is not a contradiction but a necessity. Critical and collaborative reflections like the one we shared in Rome are essential for steering the Open Science movement away from romantic idealism and toward its substantive, transformative promise. Let us hope this vision for an open science, or دانش باز, continues to grow.

7. References

All references can be found in Francesca’s work:

Di Donato, Francesca. “Le immagini della scienza aperta”. Presented at the Che cos’è la scienza aperta? Le immagini della scienza aperta, CNR, Roma, September 19, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17158926.

Introduction

For centuries, knowledge has been filtered, structured, and distributed through systems that privilege a single language, primarily English. This has created an invisible barrier between vast bodies of thought and the communities that produced them. The result is a double failure: societies cannot fully access locally relevant research, and the global scholarly community cannot benefit from the diversity of perspectives that already exist.

In the age of Artificial Intelligence and interconnected infrastructures, this imbalance is no longer a necessity—it is an error. The time has come for what I call Language Agnostic Knowledge (LAK): an epistemology, a framework, and a practical infrastructure for building a knowledge system that is not bound to a single language but instead operates across all of them.

The Problem We Face

Today’s education and scholarly communication systems are failing faster than ever. They are unable to adapt to the speed of technological change, the social need for inclusivity, and the growing recognition that language itself is a form of structural inequality. Research shows that linguistic bias in scholarly communication leads to invisibility, lower citations, and reduced career opportunities for non-English speakers . At the societal level, it prevents communities from benefiting from research produced in their own contexts.

Global infrastructures like Crossref, ORCID, DataCite, and OpenAIRE are aware of these issues, but the underlying problem persists: metadata schemas and evaluation systems are still overwhelmingly designed with English as the default. Initiatives like the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism and the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science have pushed the conversation forward, yet implementation lags.

This is not simply a matter of accessibility. It is a matter of equity, epistemic justice, and the survival of cultural and intellectual diversity.

The Origin of LAK

The roots of LAK go back much further than its first public articulation. Since childhood, I have been obsessed with the problem of how knowledge is fragmented, distorted, or lost across languages. By 2020, I had begun formulating this obsession into a structured project, and from 2023—when the AI boom accelerated—it became my professional focus. I have to thank Nina (my wife) for being the first person supporting my crazy ideas.

What emerged was a newly formulated knowledge ontology designed to support a robust, language-agnostic system of knowledge. This ontology is not an abstract schema but a living foundation for scalable, AI-native infrastructures.

I first shared LAK in an articulated form with a group of highly educated and expert people in various fields including AI and Data engineering, scholarly writing, design, system thinking, teaching, knowledge management, etc., then at the Crossref Sprint in Madrid (2025), and continued refining it in Oslo (2025) at the PKP Sprint . What a great opportunity to meet so many great people. There, multilingualism emerged as the unavoidable center of every discussion, whether the focus was on workflows, publishing tools, or culture. It was clear: the current infrastructure cannot deliver the inclusivity we need without a fundamental rethinking. The title of the session I was thankful to lead was “How to get rid of MS Word”. I felt it encapsulates many things and functions as a meme. It did, and it worked.

Ramazan Turgut, a fellow polyglot whom I first met in Madrid, immediately recognized the significance of LAK. Together, we embarked on an advocacy journey initiated by him. Over time, we established connections between LAK and PKP’s infrastructure, particularly OJS, OMP, and OPS. I believe these are the most pragmatic mediators between today’s scholarly publishing and tomorrow’s open, language-inclusive knowledge systems. Ramazan was highly skilled and experienced, and I gained numerous new insights. I want to acknowledge that he not only enriched LAK with his inputs and expertise but also encouraged me, recognized my value, and motivated me to pursue this more in the academic realm. I hope more individuals like him will join and support the LAK initiative. LAK will serve as a blueprint, inspiring the creation of numerous applications like LeraLink..

ISSH: The Home and Testbed

None of this work would have been possible without the Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities - (AKA Iran Academia) in The Hague. From the very beginning, ISSH has been the home where these ideas could be tested, refined, and given real-world shape. ISSH is the first fully online, tuition-free, multilingual graduate school, and it has provided not only the institutional foundation but also the trust and support to pursue LAK.

I owe particular gratitude to Ali Reza Kazemi, the founder and executive director of ISSH Foundation, who placed his faith in this project and in me and encouraged me and supported me to carry it forward. ISSH is more than a host and partner—it is the environment where multilingual knowledge infrastructures are not only theorized but lived, every day, in practice.

My current role as an educational development and innovation strategist at ISSH is to revamp our entire publication infrastructure, utilizing PKP products such as OJS, OMP, and OPS. I envision this transformation as a pioneering example of multilingual publication within our existing infrastructure. This initiative marks a significant step towards the future of knowledge, encompassing not only scholarly production but also other forms of knowledge supported by ISSH.

In a recent and exciting development, we have also begun laying the technical foundations of LeraLink in collaboration with Mehdi Mohseni (in his free time), a highly talented and experienced system architect and senior developer, and more importantly, a compatriot and friend with whom I experienced the hardship far beyond building LeraLink. His expertise is helping transform the LAK ontology into a functioning platform. We will share more about this progress once the time is right, but the groundwork is being set.

The Foundations of LAK

LAK rests on several principles:

1. Language Agnosticism: Knowledge should not be trapped within the boundaries of a single language. Metadata, identifiers, and systems must be designed to operate independently of linguistic constraints.

2. Co-Creation of Knowledge: Knowledge is not owned by publishers, platforms, or elites. It emerges through collaborative production, translation, annotation, design, proofreading, editing, supervising, reviewing and exchange.

3. Integration with Persistent Identifiers (PIDs): ORCID for people, ROR for organizations, DOIs for works. These identifiers must support multilingual fields, cross-lingual discoverability, and transparent provenance.

4. AI-Native and Ontology-Driven: LAK leverages AI not as a patchwork translation tool but as a native element of the system—extracting, enriching, and aligning knowledge across languages through ontologies and semantic frameworks.

5. Social Learning and Cognitive Efficiency: Building on cognitive load theory, LAK aims for systems that are not only rigorous but also usable, exchangeable, and trackable. Learning should be as engaging as Netflix, as social as TikTok, and as rigorous and contextually rich as the best academic curricula..

From Concept to Application: LeraLink

LAK is not only a theoretical vision—it is embodied in LeraLink, the unified knowledge system I have been developing together with many others. I would like to thank Sadik and Bujar Bakiu, Polina Cico, Armando Demaj, Ziad Moubayed, Mike, and Marjan de Jong, along with many others whose names cannot all be listed here, for their invaluable support at different phases of this journey.

LeraLink is designed with an atomic architecture, or what I prefer to call a fractal architecture. The smallest unit, known as a Piece, can represent any knowledge element anywhere multiple times while maintaining its single point of truth.

In short, LeraLink is a working example of how LAK principles can be applied in practice.

More on this later.

Rising Beyond the Legacy

LAK is not a solitary work. It builds upon the pioneering work of infrastructures and initiatives that have shaped today’s knowledge ecosystem:

• ORCID and ROR for disambiguating scholars and institutions.

• Crossref and DataCite for persistent identifiers and metadata networks.

• PKP for democratizing open publishing infrastructures.

• OpenAIRE and EOSC for aggregating and interlinking research outputs.

I am grateful to be a member of the Crossref Metadata Advisory Group, and to have witnessed first-hand the potential and limitations of these systems. LAK is not a replacement—it seeks to align them toward a common horizon.

Fellowship in Italy: Extending the Journey

As part of this ongoing journey, (of course, with Ramazan’s usual encouragement) I was recently awarded a fellowship with the H2IOSC–OPERAS Transnational Access Programme at CNR ILIESI (National Research Council of Italy) in Rome. This opportunity allows me to deepen the work on Language Agnostic Knowledge (LAK) in collaboration with Ramazan Turgut and to situate our ideas within one of Europe’s most respected centers for ontology and multilingual scholarship. Our aim is to work closely with the institution’s experts and researchers, to refine LAK’s ontology, to test its edge cases, and hopefully, to co-create conceptual models that integrate seamlessly into FAIR and multilingual infrastructures. Beyond the technical dimension, I hope this fellowship becomes a place where I can meet new colleagues willing to join us in building the foundations of equitable, language-agnostic knowledge systems.

Allow me to clarify: While terminology may vary across different fields—such as decolonizing knowledge, socio-linguistic bridging, or global North-South collaboration—the underlying objective remains consistent. The focus is on enhancing the availability, accessibility, and diversity of knowledge, fostering meaningful exchanges that transcend socio-linguistic barriers.

Beyond One Essay

This is not a manifesto, but a beginning. The work of LAK is ambitious: rethinking the architecture of knowledge in ways that dismantle linguistic monopolies, redesign ownership, contribution, and incentive models, and integrate AI responsibly into the heart of education and research.

It is also deeply personal. My journey as a life-long learner, project manager, researcher, and educator of methodology and knowledge management has always been shadowed by the failures of existing systems. ISSH was a home for experimentation, while LeraLink is becoming the embodiment of these principles. At VU Amsterdam too, I am grounding this vision in academic research while preparing my trajectory for a PhD-level inquiry.

Ontology-Driven Multilingual Publishing Pipelines for Epistemic Justice in AI-Era Knowledge Infrastructures

AI, Multilingualism, and Knowledge Infrastructures: Toward Epistemically Just and Equitable Learning Ecosystems.

I investigate how AI-native, multilingual publishing pipelines in LeraLink can operationalize epistemic justice by enforcing language-aware metadata, PID integrity, and linked-data interoperability at design time. The work formalizes a five-tier knowledge ontology—optimized for atomic knowledge units and cross-language versioning—mapped to established bibliographic/LD models (conceptually consonant with FRBR/FRBR-LRM and BIBFRAME) while remaining implementation-specific to our stack (tiers: Piece, Source, Volume, Series, Collections). Multilingual rigor follows COAR’s repository recommendations (ISO-639 language coding, UTF-8, multilingual keywords, OAI-PMH exposure) and BCP 47 tagging requirements used on the web and in Schema.org (inLanguage), ensuring machine-actionable discovery and UI parity. I also examine Crossref practices for translations and multilingual records (separate DOIs plus hasTranslation relationships; language metadata in deposits), treating them as constraints on deposit/harvesting logic, with PKP’s multilingual publishing guidance informing workflow ergonomics and metadata capture. The result is envisioned as an AI-assisted, ontology-driven infrastructure that resists digital colonialism by making non-English scholarship first-class, traceable, and interoperable across identifiers, catalogs, and web search surfaces.

Peer-Review Reviewed

In developing LeraLink, we inevitably have to revisit the processes of peer review and the broader question of quality metrics, especially in relation to qualitative scholarship. Conventional models of evaluation, often biased toward quantitative indicators or English-language outputs, are insufficient for an infrastructure that seeks to be language-agnostic, inclusive, and epistemically just. Reimagining peer review in this context means treating it not only as a gatekeeping mechanism but as a collaborative, multilingual, and traceable exchange that acknowledges diverse epistemic traditions. This requires new forms of quality measurement—dynamic, context-aware, and transparent—aligned with the ontology of knowledge we are building. I will continue developing these ideas in dedicated discussions with like-minded colleagues as part of the LeraLink framework.

Learning Is a Knowledge Infrastructure

Is learning—and by extension online education—truly a separate category, or is it simply a particular way of structuring, accessing, exchanging and integrating knowledge? Once we move into the domain of knowledge ontology, the distinction between “learning infra” and “knowledge infra” begins to collapse. Educational programs, especially online ones, are not more than specialized treatments of knowledge flows and communication with knowledge and particular ways of exchanging it. But knowledge is not only something to be linked. It is the foundation of wisdom and synthesis, the raw material out of which we form original thought, actual thinking, and genuine learning. If we build infrastructures that are less flawed, more inclusive, pluralistic, and just, we lay the foundation for an entirely new learning era. That conviction is precisely why Sina and I called this project Lera.Link—because learning is not separate from knowledge, but the very process of knowledge becoming alive, connected, and transformed into thought.

Will You Join?

If LAK resonates with you, this can be an invitation. Not to adopt a ready-made solution, but to join a growing conversation about how we build the next knowledge infrastructure—rigorous, multilingual, equitable, AI-native, and social. A new knowledge economy beyond the status quo. The conceptual framing, epistemic framework and intellectual exchange happens in Zenodo1 because we don’t want to wait for publication!

The horizon has never been brighter. But it will not wait.

Leave a comment

The formalization of education has historically been shaped by socio-political, economic, and cultural forces. The transition from informal learning in ancient civilizations to state-controlled mass education systems reflects broader historical transformations.

Education has existed in various forms since the earliest civilizations. Formal schooling first emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt, primarily for the training of scribes and administrative elites ¹​. In Ancient Greece, two contrasting models were prominent: Athenian education, which emphasized broad intellectual and civic training, and Spartan education, which was highly militaristic ²​.

Medieval education in Europe was largely controlled by the Catholic Church, with monastic and cathedral schools being the primary centers of learning. Universities such as Bologna (1088) and Paris (1160) institutionalized higher education, maintaining a strong theological foundation ¹​.

From the 18th century onward, education became a tool for nation-building. In Prussia, mass compulsory schooling was introduced around 1800 to instill discipline and civic obedience ¹​. Similarly, Japan’s Meiji Restoration (1868) rapidly modernized education, adopting a Western-style system. Lenin’s Soviet Union (1919) used education as a means to promote socialist ideology and eradicate illiteracy ¹​.

The Industrial Revolution intensified the need for mass literacy and technical skills, leading to the standardization of curricula and the emergence of centralized education systems across the Western world ².

Epistemological Frameworks and Dominant Educational Theories

Educational thought has been shaped by shifting epistemological paradigms, from religious orthodoxy to scientific empiricism, and later, constructivist approaches.

Pre-modern education was dominated by scholasticism, which attempted to reconcile faith and reason. This persisted until the Enlightenment (17th–18th century), which introduced empiricism and rationalism as dominant epistemological frameworks ²​.

John Locke’s tabula rasa (blank slate) theory suggested that knowledge is acquired through experience, influencing early educational reforms. Rousseau’s Émile (1762) further emphasized the role of natural development and experiential learning ²​.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, education was largely influenced by behaviorism, particularly the work of Thorndike and Skinner, which emphasized stimulus-response learning ³​. However, John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky challenged this model by advocating constructivist approaches, where learning is an active and socially mediated process ⁴​.

• Dewey’s Pragmatism: Education should be experiential and democratic, preparing individuals for participation in society.

• Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory: Learning is a social process, occurring through interaction with more knowledgeable others, within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) ³​.

These perspectives became the foundation of progressive education and later social constructivism ³​.

Several critiques of traditional education emerged before the AI era, questioning standardization, exclusion, and epistemological rigidity.

Freire (1921) criticized traditional education as a mechanism of social control, where knowledge is "deposited" into passive students. He advocated for dialogical education, where learners critically engage with knowledge to transform their realities ⁵.

Industrial-era education was designed for efficiency rather than individualized learning, leading to critiques that it stifles creativity and cultural inclusivity ⁴​. Schunk (2012) further noted that traditional instruction overlooks the situated and constructivist nature of learning​ ³.

Education systems historically excluded women, lower classes, and colonized populations. Even when access improved, curricular content often reinforced dominant cultural narratives, limiting inclusivity ²​.

Constructivist critiques highlighted the role of education in maintaining social hierarchies, emphasizing the need for culturally responsive pedagogy ³.

The historical trajectory of education provides a critical lens for examining the impact of AI on learning. The two dominant approaches—adapting AI to education vs. reimagining education with AI—must be analyzed in light of past epistemological shifts and ongoing critiques of educational systems.

• Micro-Level Adaptation: AI tools such as personalized learning platforms are integrated into existing educational structures while preserving traditional curricula.

• Macro-Level Re-imagination: AI is used to challenge existing epistemological assumptions, fostering new models of knowledge construction.

References

1. History of education. Wikipedia (2025).

2. Willilam Boyd. The History Of Western Education. (1947).

3. Schunk, D. H. Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective. xi, 402 (Macmillan Publishing Co, Inc, New York, NY, England, 2012).

4. Popkewitz, T. S. Dewey, Vygotsky, and the Social Administration of the Individual: Constructivist Pedagogy as Systems of Ideas in Historical Spaces. Am. Educ. Res. J. 35, 535–570 (1998).

5. Freire, P. & Macedo, D. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. (Continuum, New York, 2000).

This is not a joke.

This is about a method that WORKS.

Human capability is unbelievable. We have evidence—millions of data points.

This is not a self-help trick.

It’s history-tested.

It’s theory-backed.

It’s psychologically replicable.

It works so well, it became illegal under international law.

But,

There are ways to bypass the IL with minimal consequences, but these methods are for advanced levels. Let’s focus on the beginner’s level.

I’m talking about a proven method to unlock a level of capability most “good people” thought impossible.

It has empowered many.

⚙️ Who Is This For?

This is just the beginner’s level.

Mastery requires time, conditions, and, unfortunately, some factors outside your control—like heavy mainstream media influence, ideology, economic precarity, geographic distance, and moral erosion.

But with dedication, and persistence, anyone can begin.

🚀 The Method (Beginner Level)

1. Observe suffering.

   Start with a child somewhere in the world. Let’s choose Gaza.

   Starving. Not even crying anymore. Dying.

   Take it in.

2. Try to overcome the pressure. Look away.

   You don’t need to take it hard; it’s okay to cry and feel sad for a while. You can look away little by little.
   Scroll. Sip. Stretch.

   Go on with your day.
   Relax and empty your mind. Deep breath, only think of nothing!

3. Repeat.

   Look again.

   Then look away again.
   Make it a habit.

   Let me give you some practical advice inspired by the book, “Atomic Habit”.

   Make it Obvious:

   Increase the visibility and cues of desired habits to be able to forget. Think about things like this: I need to focus on my life, my family, my job, and my future. Try to stay short-sighted and think short-term. Don’t assume that this can be you in the future. Don’t self-identify at all.

   Make it Attractive:

   Link desired habits with things you enjoy, use temptation bundling, and join groups where the habit is the norm. This is crucial. Listen attentively, read carefully, and engage in conversations with individuals who are actively attempting to undermine the truth of what you have witnessed.

   Make it Easy:

   Reduce friction and make the desired behavior as simple as possible, focusing on tiny steps and habit stacking. Don’t dwell on the suffering. Allow it to pass through you and make easy choices, such as visiting Burger King or McDonald’s.

   Make it Satisfying:

   Ensure that the reward for the habit is immediate and enjoyable, using positive reinforcement and tracking progress.

4. Normalize it1.

   Say things like:

   “There’s always war somewhere.”

   “They should have moved.”

   “It’s not that simple.”

5. Feel less2.

   Until you feel nothing.
   Live in the present moment and love yourself unconditionally as an extraordinary human being.

   Until it’s just another post.

   Another headline.

   Another image.

🧠 Final Note

“Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.”

— Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I, Article 54

“Using hunger as a weapon is a war crime.”

— Rome Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxv)

Yes.

It had to become law. Let that sink! IT HAD TO BECOME LAW!!!!!!!!!

Because people got too good at it.

I propose us not to be so sure of our humanity.

Let’s remember, the first step is easy:

Watch. Look away. Repeat.

Watch. Look away. Repeat.

Watch. Look away. Repeat.

I got busy.

Went out for a cigarette in front of the building.

People pass by in all colors—on bikes, in cars, on motorbikes, on foot.

People from all over the world are here.

I try to collect myself.

As usual during breaks, I open Instagram—and I see Suwayda Hospital. Destroyed. Riddled with bullets.

DanaDel has a Syrian friend—his classmate. A clever, sweet boy. I saw his mother once, rushing out of the school, phone in hand, frantic. Dressed in black. She looked like someone banging against the walls of a tiny basement in the heart of Suwayda. Watching her—her terrified, anxious face—made the entire city of justice and peace feel small and tight, like a cell under siege. Like the one I survived in: two years, inside a 2-by-2 concrete shelter.

A bit farther down the street, I saw more Syrians, also in black. It seemed they were coming back from somewhere. Suwayda is a special place. Or used to be. And suddenly I understood: Suwayda comes from the Arabic root s-w-d—meaning black. Its full name is al-Suwayda. In Arabic, al-Suwaydaʾ means “the little black one.” But it has another meaning, too. In ancient Greek and Islamic medicine, suwaydaʾ al-qalb refers to the innermost part of the heart—the seat of deep emotions, the psyche, and awareness. In the theory of the four humors, sawdāʾ (black bile) is associated with melancholy, sorrow, and profound thought. Almost all industrially produced foods in Europe and America are said to be, in some sense, “sawdā-inducing.” Politically, the same seems to be true—perhaps.

So Suwayda is a hidden, dark spot in the heart. A place where secrets, grief, or inner truths lie buried. Like that disabled girl in the Suwayda hospital.

An eight- or nine-year-old girl with disabilities. Hiding in a cupboard. Shot in the head. Bodies left decomposing around the hospital. Apparently, all parties involved committed atrocities. This criminality has become normalized—just like the grotesque list of 65,000 (or however many) victims in Gaza, from children aged four to six, to the elderly and disabled. DanaDel’s Syrian friend’s family had gone into hiding in a basement in Suwayda, with barely any internet connection. I’m talking about the days when the situation was at its worst.

And now, what am I supposed to do with this? What should I do for DanaDel’s friend? For that girl in the cupboard—who still doesn’t know that her parents have been killed?

Suwayda is a city in southern Syria. I know many Persian speakers have no idea where it is. And they don’t feel they need to know. Especially since its people speak Arabic—another reason not to care. After all the kindness they’ve extended to Persian-speaking Afghans!!, they have no more room left in their suwaydaʾ al-qalb for Arabs. But the more you know, the more you realize: Suwayda is real. A real place. On Earth. In our own time. Not so far from your lived memory. Worse yet, it has a real hospital. With a real cupboard. Where a real disabled girl tried to hide.

If you locate it on the map, you break the law of forgetting.

And by forgetting, I don’t mean sin. I mean a survival mechanism. A coping tool.

But why do we always have to be stretched so far? Why does everything carry us so painfully far away?

I’ve been to Syria—when I was still in my mother’s womb. We traveled as far as Quneitra. From there, through her eyes, I must’ve glimpsed the Golan Heights. Damascus, too. I once crossed Syria’s fertile soil by train—back when I had a different name, and Syria was caught in a different war. Now, the image of Suwayda Hospital links in my mind to Evin Prison—bombed by the very army that now kills hungry civilians in Gaza—under the grotesque excuse that it was “a symbol of oppression.” And yet, prisoners in Iran today are in even worse conditions than before. That bombing didn’t end oppression. It only changed its costume.

My mind leaps again, to the times I wasn’t born yet—when prisoners were marched up Evin’s hills and shot, but not while escaping. They made it look like escape, so they could shoot them with justification. Just like today, when they shoot starving people in Gaza.

Then I remember when I myself was a prisoner—and further away, people were being gunned down in the reed marshes of Khuzestan. And there was that time—me, Majid, and so many others—separated by more than a thousand kilometers, but still it felt like the eyes on the television were looking straight at me. Smiling at the foot of the gallows.

It all circles back to war. Back to the moments when I expected it all to end at any second. I used to think: maybe a nearby explosion is better than a distant one. At least it’s fast. Like the bombing in Tajrish Square. At least that death is immediate. Less suffering. Right? No time to analyze, to process what’s happening. By the time you flinch—it’s done.

Maybe that’s the root of it. When you pay attention to one life, one face—you sign up for a whole chain of interlocked griefs and buried memories. They soak into your skin, your nerves.

I remember staring at my prison yard’s concrete wall, as fat raindrops smashed down like missiles. And I thought: if I were that one dry, motionless spot on the wall—how many bombs would it take until one hit me directly and ended it? It’s strange. Thousands and thousands of drops had to fall before I realized—even in the worst-case scenario—not a single hair may be touched.

I remember they once said they wanted to wipe a whole country off the map—with missiles. What a foolish calculation. What an impossible mission. What a dangerous delusion.

And I stop.

But how do I return to my regular work now, with this downpour of grief on my head? My job is about building futures. It has no space for the chaos of this moment.

How do I pull myself together? My life, my daily work?

I have to finish the task. But I know—I can’t.

I know that if I let myself think even a little more about that disabled girl in the cupboard, I’ll have to stop working altogether. Decision paralysis. The work remains undone. Still, I must return to it.

I keep thinking: It’s not just missiles that have become long-range. The media, the wars, their victims—they’ve all gone long-range too.

So what now? What should I write? For whom? And what difference does it make now?

I know what happens after. But what happens now?

I wish we could go back to when a letter had to travel for days to reach its recipient. Now, the moment I hit “publish,” you get an email, or a notification. Or someone forwards it instantly. I don’t know your name. I don’t even know if you’re real. Or if you’re even my intended reader.

But in the end, I decide: maybe you feel something similar. Maybe not the same way—but does it really matter which end of catastrophe you’re standing on?

So I write. To drain a little of this trauma from my body and my mind—onto this virtual paper. So that you might read it. So that maybe you might write, too. And if not for me—for this imagined “us” that lives in your mind—for yourself.

Writing sharpens your thinking.

Writing soothes.

And more than soothing, words can heal.

Words are massive. Even the tiniest ones. Like atoms. And some writings, just through the energy they carry, can drag entire nations into war. Can destroy lives, pillage resources.

I have to get back to work.

Even though—I know—I won’t.

Maybe you’ll write.

مشغول می‌شوم.

برای سیگار می‌روم جلوی در ساختمان.

رنگ رنگ، آدم می‌آید و می‌رود. با دوچرخه، با ماشین، با موتور، پیاده.

از همه جای جهان اینجا آدم داریم.

می‌خواهم کمی خودم را جمع و جور کنم.

اینستاگرام را به عادت زمان تنفس باز می‌کنم و بیمارستان سویداء را می‌بینم که ریخته‌اند و به گلوله بسته‌اندش.

دوستِ دانادل، یک پسر باهوش و بامزه سوری است. مادرش را دیدم که با چه اضطرابی از در مدرسه، تلفن در دست، بدو بدو می‌رفت تا برسد به جایی که نمی‌دانستم. سیاه پوشیده بود. نگاهش که می‌کردی احساس می‌کردی در یک زیرزمین کوچک در قلب شهر سویدا به در و دیوار می‌زند. منظره دیدن او، و چهره نگران دهشت‌زده‌اش، کل شهر عدالت و صلح را چه قدر تنگ و کوچک می‌نمود، مثل آنکه تمام شهر سلولی در محاصره باشد. آنجا که من ۲ سال، در یک سنگر ۲ در ۲ از بتون، زنده‌ماندم.

کمی جلوتر، سوری‌های بیشتری را دیدم که سیاه پوشیده بودند و انگار از جایی برمی‌گشتند. سویدا جای ویژه‌ایست. بوده است. آه الان فهمیدم سویداء‌ از س-و-د و از سیاه می‌آید. السویداء اسم کامل عربیش است. خیلی وقت است دروزی‌ها آنجا زندگی کرده‌اند. السُوَیداء در عربی یعنی «سیاهِ کوچک» یا «سیاهی کوچک». اما معنی دیگری هم دارد. سویداء القلب در طب یونانی و اسلامی یعنی بخش درونی قلب که مرکز احساسات عمیق، روان، و آگاهی بوده و در نظریه اخلاط اربعة، سوداء (سودایی یا سوداوی بودن) به ملال و غم و اندیشه ژرف مرتبط است. تقریبا همه غذاهایی که در اروپا و آمریکا تولید صنعتی می‌شوند یک جورهایی به قول معروف سودازا هستند. در سیاست هم ظاهرا همین اتفاق افتاده است (شاید).

پس سویدا نقطه‌ای تاریک و پنهان در قلب است، جایی که رازها، غم‌ها یا حقیقت درونی در آن پنهان شده. مثل دختر معلول بیمارستان سویدا.

دختر هشت نه ساله‌ معلولی که در کمد پنهان شده و به سرش شلیک کرده‌اند، جسدهایی که در حال تجزیه هستند و پیرامون ساختمان بیمارستان رها شده‌اند. ظاهرا همه طرف‌های درگیر، جنایت کرده‌اند و این جنایت‌پیشه‌گی در سایه فهرست ۶۵ هزارنفری (آمار دقیقی ندارم) از کودکان ۴ تا ۶ ساله گرفته تا پیران و از کارافتادگان غزه، امر عادی شده است. خانواده دوستِ سوری دانادل در سویدا، در زیرزمین، با اینترنت ناچیز، پنهان شده‌بودند. آن روزها که درگیری شدید بود را می‌گویم. من حالا راجع به این چه باید بکنم؟ برای دوست دانادل چه باید بکنم؟ برای سویدا، آن دختر معلولی که به سرش شلیک شده و هنوز خبر ندارد که پدر و مادرش کشته شده‌اند چه باید بکنم؟

سویداء شهری در جنوب سوریه است. می‌دانم که بسیاری فارسی زبان‌ها هیچ ایده‌ای از جای سویدا ندارند. کاری هم ندارند که داشته باشند. خاصه که مردمانش هم عربی حرف می‌زنند. یک دلیل دیگر برای اینکه اهمیت ندهند. بس که با افغانستانی‌تباران پارسی‌گوی، مهربانی کرده‌اند و می‌کنند!‌ دیگر جایی برای عرب‌ها در سویداء قلبشان پیدا نمی‌کنند. هر چه بیشتر بدانند، بیشتر می‌فهمند که سویدا یک جای واقعی‌ست. جایی روی زمین و در زمانه خودشان و نه چندان دور از خاطره زیسته‌شان. بدتر آنکه یک بیمارستان واقعی هم دارد؛ با یک دختر هشت-نه ساله معلول، که در یک کمد واقعی پنهان شده است. اگر جایش را بدانند، قانون عمومی فراموشی زیرپاگذاشته شده. فراموشی را به مثابه گناه نمی‌گویم. به مثابه ابزاری برای تاب آوری خود می‌گویم. اصلا چرا ما باید این‌قدر دوربُرد باشیم. چرا همه چیز، ما را تا این اندازه دور می‌بَرد؟‌

من سوریه بوده‌ام. هنگامی که هنوز در تن مادرم می‌بالیدم. تا قنیطرة رفته بودیم. از آنجا، و از پشت پلک‌های مادرم، باید بلندی‌های جولان را هم دیده باشیم. دمشق را هم. من یک بار هم از خاک حاصلخیز سوریه با قطار رد شده‌ام. آن زمان که اسمم این نبود و سوریه هم در این جنگ نبود (درگیر جنگ دیگری بود). حالا بیمارستان سویدا در کله‌ام وصل می‌شود به اوین که موشک می‌خورد و بعد می‌رود تا زمانی که نبودم و در تپه‌هایش زندانی‌های فرارانده را اعدام می‌کردند، مثل گرسنگان رانده غزه را که امروز.

برمی‌گردم به زمانی که خودم تلویحا زندانی بودم، و آن دورترها مردم را در نیزارهای خوزستان به رگبار بسته‌بودند. سپس، آنجا که بین من و مجید و بسیاری دیگر یک هزار و چندصد کیلومتر فاصله بود ولی انگار در تلویزیون وسط این‌همه آدم، زُل زده به من یکی و پای چوبه دار لبخند می‌زند.

از همه این‌ها می‌رسم به جنگ، می‌رسم به زمانی که هر لحظه انتظار داشتم که دیگر همه چیز به پایان برسد. آنجا که فکر می‌کردم شاید انفجارِ نزدیک بهتر از انفجار دور باشد. یاد انفجار میدان تجریش بیفت! مرگش حتمی و سریع است. دست‌کم، رنجش کمتر است. نه؟ و فرصت تجزیه و تحلیل اینکه چه اتفاقی دارد می‌افتد را نداری. داری؟ تا بخواهی بجنبی، اتفاق افتاده است.

اصلا علتش همین‌است. از یکی که آغاز می‌کنی، به یکی که توجه می‌کنی، باید پیه زنجیره‌ درهم و چندلایه‌ای از رنج و خاطره را به تن و روانت بمالی.

می‌رسم به آن‌جا که داشتم به دیوار بتونی حیاط زندانم نگاه می‌کردم که قطره‌های درشت باران مثل موشک رویش سقوط می‌کردند و من با خودم حساب می‌کردم، خُب؛ اگر که من آن نقطه خشک غیرمتحرک روی بتون باشم، چند موشک لازم است تا سرانجام یکی از آن‌ها روی سرم بیفتد و کارم را تمام کند؟ در تمام شگفتی باید هزاران هزار قطره فرو می‌افتاد تا من بفهمم که حتی در بدترین شرایط ممکن است تار مویی هم از سرم کم نشود. یادم می‌آید که می‌خواهند یک کشور را از صفحه روزگار محو کنند؛ با موشک! چه محاسبه ابلهانه، کار ناممکن، و روایت خطرناکی!

می‌مانم.

حالا چه‌طور با این‌همه قطره- این باران مصیبت که روی سرم ریخته- برگردم به کار روزمره‌ام؟ کارم، آخر، نگاهش به آینده‌هاست. کاری به وضعیت نامعمولِ این لحظه‌ها ندارد. چه‌طور حالا خودم را، کارم را، زندگی روزمره‌ام را جمع کنم؟‌ باید کار را تمام کنم. ولی می‌دانم که نمی‌شود.

می‌دانم که اگر کمی بیشتر به دختر معلول توی کمد فکر کنم، دیگر باید دست از کار بکشم. دچار فلج تصمیم‌گیری شده‌ام. کار ناتمام است. باید به کار برگردم.

مدام فکر می‌کنم که این تنها موشک‌ها نیستند که دوربُرد شده‌اند. رسانه‌ها، جنگ‌ها و قربانی‌هایش هم.

با خودم می‌گویم، خُب بنویسم چه؟ برای چه‌کسی؟‌ و «حالا» که چه بشود؟‌ «سپس‌ها» می‌دانم چه می‌شود. مسأله اما این است که حالا چه بشود؟ کاش برگردیم به زمانی که یک نامه مدت‌ها باید سفر می‌کرد تا به دریافت کننده برسد. به مجرد آنکه بر روی دکمه پابلیش بزنم، شما یا ایمیل می‌گیرید، یا نوتیفیکیشن، یا خیلی زود یکی می‌تواند برایتان بفرستدش. نه اسمتان را می‌دانم و نه ‌می‌دانم اصلا واقعی هستید و مخاطب من هستید یا نه.

ته خط، تصمیمم را می‌گیرم. حتما که تو هم حال مشابهی داری، حالا شاید نه آن‌طوری که برای من رخ می‌دهد، ولی مگر فرقی هم می‌کند که فاجعه تمام عیار را از کدام طرفش نگاه کنیم؟‌ تصمیم می‌گیرم بنویسم تا دست کم کمی از این تروما را از بدن و ذهنم روی این کاغذ مجازی ریخته باشم. تو خوانده باشی. شاید تو هم خواستی بنویسی. اگر نه که برای من یا یک مایی که توی کله‌ات ساخته‌ای، برای خودت. نوشتن به اندیشه‌ات جلا می‌دهد. نوشتن می‌تواند تسکین بخش باشد. کلمات می‌توانند از تسکین مهم‌تر، درمانگر باشند. واژه‌ها عظیمند. کوچک‌ترینشان عظیمند. درست مانند اتم. پروژه‌هایی نوشتاری هستند که با نیروی حاصل از خود، یک کشور را در کام هیولای جنگ می‌کشند و مردم و منابعشان را به غارت می‌برند و نابود می‌کنند.

باید بروم کار را تمام کنم. اگر چه نمی‌شود!

بنویسی شاید!

My son overheard his mom talking to a friend. The friend mentioned that her husband was out meeting his friends.

My son paused, puzzled. Then he turned to his mom and said:

“But, Babi1 doesn’t have friends to go to.”

His words struck me like a quiet truth I hadn’t dared phrase myself.

I don’t really “go out/hang out with friends.” Most people I know are either family, or so close they’ve merged into that category. I don’t have that habit —the casual, aimless act of just being with friends.

His innocent point opened something in me. A void.

I almost cried.

I suddenly had clarity through his beautiful, curious eyes and mind.

I remembered my teenage years—before exile, before war, before the long detour from my homeland, before isolation and disconnection. Back then, I did have friends. I was part of a circle. That circle was scattered long time ago.

And I never quite built or develop a new one. A circle of friends to go watch football with, or to hang out with just doing nothing.

But then another thought came.

Maybe I didn’t feel the void because I was healing.

Maybe my beautiful, fulfilling family has been that healing.

Maybe, while building a solid foundation—of love, of safety, of home—I didn’t have space for this kind of longing.

Maybe it’s normal. It's not, but certainly reasonable and explainable.

When you’re focused on surviving, on parenting, on building something that finally feels like it won’t collapse—you don’t miss what doesn’t fit in that chapter.

And maybe now that I do feel the need… it’s not failure.

Maybe it’s the sign of something good:

That we made it.

We eventually bought a house.

We built stability.

We became a solid loving and caring unit.

And now?

Maybe it’s time to start re-growing other parts of the story.

Maybe this is my next step—my evolution, not my lack.

Democracy is not a slogan. It’s a legal structure. It lives in constitutions, treaties, statutes, and the procedural muscle of law. But in countries like Iran, legal knowledge—particularly about human rights, criminal accountability, gender justice, and constitutional law—is not just hard to access. It’s actively erased, obscured, or disfigured by ideology. So people are expected to “defend their rights” while having no clear idea what those rights are, or how they’ve been violated, or how to frame demands in legally sound terms. It’s like being handed a scalpel and told to perform your own surgery—with no anatomy, no training, and no access to a hospital.

“Legal empowerment is not a luxury—it’s the very foundation of accountable governance.”

— Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics

This is why legal literacy matters. And not just for lawyers.

We don’t just need legal experts to know the law. We need activists, students, teachers, journalists, and ordinary citizens to understand the architecture of justice—how it’s been built, how it’s been broken, and how it could be rebuilt. Without that shared grammar, we’re stuck between outrage and helplessness, between trauma and mythology.

That’s why, with colleagues at (Iran Academia) and expert friends of ISSH, we’ve been talking and thinking about the possibility of launching a multilingual, open-access, peer-reviewed legal journal. Not a boutique publication for academics in exile. A functional tool. A credible source. A living, breathing space for legal knowledge that is accessible, professional, reliable, and politically independent. One that speaks both to the academic and to the activist. To the legislator and to the protester. To the ones who still dream of a future—while holding the memory of every law denied.

Law is the most powerful semantic institution ever devised.

— I guess Pierre Schlag have said this.

This journal is more than just paper and ink (or pixels and PDFs). It’s a response to a vacuum we unfortunately see. A place where censored themes like transitional justice, international criminal law, gender-based persecution, or truth commissions are no longer whispers but structured discussions. Where translated frameworks—like the Rome Statute or Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—can circulate freely, in Persian, to those who need them most.

“Knowledge of one’s rights is the first step toward defending them.”

— Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

But let’s be frank: publishing is not magic. A journal won’t democratize a country. What it can do is break the isolation of legal minds scattered across borders and bureaucracies. It can translate the dense into the livable. The inaccessible into the teachable. The censored into the shared. And it can be the anchor for something deeper or more extensive: a knowledge ecosystem that builds literacy as a civic habit, not a specialist luxury.

Many initiatives have tried, and many are ongoing. Many valuable projects. But what’s missing is not good intentions. It’s structured, reliable, international, yet localized legal knowledge body. Continuity. A place where legal knowledge is not just published but curated, reviewed, contextualized, and translated into recommendations—without distortion, without propaganda, and without the elitist filter that too often separates law from life.

If we want democracy, we have to build the literacy that makes it legible.

And for that, we need to stop waiting for perfect constitutions, and start producing imperfect but living documents. Not just manifestos or white papers, but drafts. Proposals. Translations. Commentaries. Solid material, not floating ideas. This will be the missing piece of already existing efforts in the realm of activism and reporting and advocacy.

As one friend put it: “South Africa’s transitional justice framework was being written five years before apartheid fell.” The point isn’t comparison. It’s preparedness. And preparedness without legal infrastructure is a house without a foundation. Unfortunately, many political activists lack knowledge about legal procedures, frameworks, and the underlying foundations of their advocacy.

We can do better. For sure.

And, let’s remember:

If we don’t write our future in the language of law, someone else will write it for us—in the language of force.

We eagerly anticipate new collaborative opportunities with our community to create sustainable and impactful projects.

Ik begin hier met schrijven in het Nederlands.

Mensen die mij kennen, weten dat ik nog geen Nederlands kan spreken. Echt heel weinig.

Maar moet ik wachten tot mijn Nederlands goed genoeg is om met jullie te communiceren? Nee. Dat denk ik niet.

Of je het leuk vindt of niet: ik kan gebruik maken van ChatGPT en van mijn kleine beetje leeskennis.

Jullie weten het vast ook: schriftelijke taal leer je meestal sneller dan spreektaal.

Je begint met begrijpen voordat je echt kunt praten.

Je moet echt het impostersyndroom overwinnen om te durven schrijven.

Ik schrijf in het Arabisch, Albanees, Perzisch en Engels — en nu begin ik ook in het Nederlands.

Als je me morgen ergens ziet, denk dan niet dat ik net zo goed spreek als ik schrijf (met AI-hulp).

Wees lief — en zeg het me alsjeblieft niet recht in m’n gezicht! 😅

Want ik weet het al. Jullie zijn erg direct.

Ik ben begonnen met het inburgeringsboek. Mijn lieve vrouw Nina begon ook met die boeken — maar ik heb maar een tiende van haar discipline.

Ik wil echt graag Nederlands leren, zoals zij dat nu spreekt en in de bibliotheek werkt,

of zoals onze 6-jarige zoon die moeiteloos Nederlands praat.

Maar voor mij werkt dat hele gestructureerde leren met boeken en cursussen totaal niet.

En ik werk notabene zelf in onderwijs, pedagogiek en epistemologie!

Het Nederlandse onderwijssysteem? Ik kan er gewoon niet in meekomen.

Dus… ik ben naar de Centrale Bibliotheek in Den Haag gegaan en ik heb het boek Tat Twam Asi van A.L. Snijders gepakt.

Nu lees ik om de dag een stukje met Lianne. Het is een prachtig boek.

Ik voel me beter. Nina zegt dat ik meer begrijp. En leesteksten gaan ook beter.

Arabisch heb ik trouwens ook zo geleerd.

Voor mij gaat taal leren over lezen of spreken zonder dat je alles begrijpt.

Het belangrijkste is dat je het durft. Dat je kunt lezen. Begrip komt later.

Grammatica? Dat komt pas als derde of vierde.

Ik hoop dat ik hier later meer over kan vertellen.

Dit was mijn eerste poging.

Laat me alsjeblieft weten als ik iets fout heb geschreven. Dank je wel.

Van iemand die vastzit tussen vijf talen.

Tot later!

حدود هزار نفر از «طرح» رفراندوم و مجلس مؤسسان حمایت کرده‌اند.

🔸 توجه: «طرح» در اینجا دو معنای هم‌زمان دارد—و این دوگانگی، تعیین‌کننده است.

نخست، معنای رایج‌ترش: «مطرح‌شدن» یا «پیش‌نهاد‌ه‌شدن».

دوم، معنای دقیق‌ترش: «برنامه‌ای دارای طراح، مجری، جدول زمانی، مسیر اجرا و ای‌بسا ابزار سنجش».

اگر این حمایت، از «برنامه» است، آن‌گاه باید پرسید: طراح کیست؟ برنامه دقیقاً چیست؟ مجری آن چه‌کسی‌ست؟ نهاد یا سازوکاری پشت آن وجود دارد؟ یا ما با نوعی فریب اجتماعی روبروییم؟

و اگر این حمایت، از «پیشنهاد» به معنای عام آن است—خب، چنین پیشنهادی نه فقط در پنجاه سال گذشته، که دست‌کم از عصر مشروطه تا امروز، بارها طرح شده است. چه چیزی این «پیشنهاد» را حالا ویژه (یا آنطور که برخی دوستان ابلهانه توصیف کرده‌اند، تاریخی و مسئولانه) کرده؟ چرا حالا؟ چرا باید به آن توجه کرد؟ آیا ما صرفاً نیم‌قرن دیر کرده‌ایم، یا مسئله چیز دیگری‌ست؟

🔸 یک احتمال (در کنار ده‌ها احتمال دیگر) می‌تواند این باشد (کلاه خودتان قاضی):

کسانی (برجستگانی)—از فرط نومیدی، یا از سرِ عادت تاریخی—هر چه فکر می‌کنند، هیچ چاره‌ای جز دخیل بستن به اجزای طردشده یا تضعیف‌شده‌ی همین سیستم نمی‌بینند، برای آن‌که خودِ سیستم را تغییر دهند. آن‌ها این اقدام قهقرایانه را با استدلال «واقعیت» که همان «پراگماتیسم سیاسی» یا از زاویه دیگر «اپورتونیسم سیاسی» هم می‌تواند نام‌گذاری شود، توجیه می‌کنند. این گروه، نه آن ظرفیت را داشته و دارند (و نه شاید خواست را) که در فضای نسبتاً باز اروپا یا آمریکای کمتر استبدادی، نیرویی سازمان‌یافته‌ و سیاسی (مثلاً حزب یا جبهه‌ای دموکراتیک) بنا کنند. همیشه باید در سایه (ظل) فردی بایستند. همیشه باید در پس «قهرمانی خیالی» گردهم‌آیند.

صدای جمعی‌شان تنها هنگامی شنیده می‌شود که در نقش سیاهه‌لشکر، پُست قهرمان معمولا خیالی درآمده باشند—آن‌هم به امید آن‌که: «این نیز بگذرد». چه اصطلاح خوبی ما در شیراز داریم: «بالاداری».

این نخبگان—یا بهتر بگویم، «برجستگان» (زیرا بسیاری از اینان، نخبگی برایشان رُخ داده است تا آنکه نخبه بوده باشند—این صغارت را جمعی کرده‌اند.

به واژه دیگر، آنان جز ساختار هرمی، سلسله‌مراتبی، و قائم بر یک رأس نمی‌فهمند. نه اینکه نخواهند؛ ظاهراً چنین نیاموخته‌اند و نمی‌توانند.

تا اینجا، آنچه می‌بینیم، بیشتر به «سندرم استکهلم» می‌ماند تا به راهکاری رهایی‌بخش یا جنبشی عقلانی و واقع‌بینانه برای اتحاد و هم‌صدایی.

🔹 پی‌نوشت ضروری:

فرق «استقبال» و «حمایت» را دست‌کم نگیرید.

استقبال را به معنی خوش‌آمد گفتن و تشویق می‌گویم.

حمایت (پشتیبانی) اما یعنی پشت کاری یا کسی درآمدن و ایستادن، و مسئولیت سیاسی یا اخلاقی‌اش را پذیرفتن1.

پرسش از کسانی که پشتیبانی می‌کنند بسیار است. اما من دست کم تا امروز صدایی نبوده‌ام که آن‌ها بشنوندش.

I took the image from article called: Differences Between Polymaths, Specialists and Generalists.

I’m a registered EU Expert, a judge at the QS Reimagine Education Awards, and a fellow researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Sociology Department), focusing on education, knowledge, and the tensions between formal structures and lived realities.

I’ve co-founded several projects and platforms—some educational, some technological, most somewhere in-between. My approach is shaped as much by music and storytelling as by war, isolation, and years of deprivation from books, knowledge, and technology. These absences taught me their emancipatory power—and their dangers. That experience is not just background; it’s method. It informs how I think, remember, and create.

The project I care most about—and have been part of for nearly a decade—is ISSH (Iran Academia). It’s the first tuition-free, high-quality university for interdisciplinary social studies focused on Iran and its region. I don’t always agree with the topics taught, but I’ve helped shape it into an ecosystem of knowledge and a foundation that’s offered real hope across borders. I still dream it could become a model for a post-national, learner-driven university in West Asia—though I’m not always hopeful.

I’m drawn to spaces that are not yet fully formed. I work best where things are still in process—messy, unresolved, but full of potential. I crave structure, yet score 98% in openness to experience (read: creativity).

Over the years, I’ve inhabited many roles—some given, some taken, some survived: Political activist, “artist at risk”, the president’s young consultant, founding member of the First Iranian Youth Parliament, "alien". I’ve also worked as an educator, instructor, project manager (senior), system designer, strategist, executive manager, event organizer, platform builder, founder, fundraiser, grant writer, translator, podcast host, musician, songwriter, sound designer, photographer, editor, and CSO actor.

P.S. I’m not a jack of all trades. I’m a polymath generalist—by necessity, by choice, and by temperament.

What Are Pieces?

They are notes—raw, precise, personal. Numbered, not ordered. They may look scattered but they are interconnected like neurons, not chapters.

Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method, I assign a unique ID to each thought. This allows me to build ideas organically, non-linearly.

Each Piece stands alone. Some may become essays, projects, or just stay as they are.

But to those of you I’ve met here in The Hague — parents I saw every day at school drop-off, friends from Spain, Germany, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, the US, Canada, Suriname, Syria, the Netherlands, Georgia, Albania, Iran, Turkey1, and beyond — you know me in a different way. We’ve seen each other face to face, our kids have become friends, and we’ve shared bits of life together. Even if briefly. Even if silently.

I know that many of you follow the news. You try to stay informed about what’s happening in our home countries — especially when it comes to the regions we’re from. But I also know how impossibly complicated it is. Things are moving fast. Geopolitical dynamics are shifting. It’s not realistic to expect anyone to constantly keep up with all the headlines, all the nuance, all the layered histories and hidden forces at play.

What you may not know (though I’m sure some of you do—perhaps even better than many) is that my understanding of Iran and the region isn’t merely informed by news or analysis. It’s shaped by a far more profound source: a complex, often involuntary lived experience and a kind of knowledge that transcends academia. I don’t just feel entitled to speak on this—I feel a responsibility. And I believe what I have to share could offer a perspective that’s uniquely valuable to you.

And Iran is not just a “national” issue. It’s a glocal one — shaped by global forces and deeply rooted in local realities.

So I’ve decided it’s time to do something — even if small. I want to begin writing here. Short notes. Little pieces. Just to help make sense of what’s happening — in Iran, in Syria, in Israel, in this strange and painful web of events.

• Why is there war?

• What’s really happening inside Iran?

• What roles are different powers playing?

• What is Israel doing?

• Why is Syria the way it is?

• Why are so many dear friends of mine constantly worried?

• Why are some of us calling home every day, not knowing if the lines will still be open?

• Why is the internet being cut off?

• Where is this all heading?

• And deeper than all that:

• Where is Iran — really?

• What are its people like?

• What do they think, what do they feel?

• How is the world order changing — not just in theory but in the very lives of those in Iran, Syria, and across our region?

Maybe, through these notes, we’ll come to understand each other more when we meet — in person or online, in the park, at school, or even just passing by.

If you’ve received this message but never had a Substack account, I kindly ask you to consider subscribing to mine. And please, let me know if this resonates with you.

Silence is heavy.

Writing without a sense of being heard feels like writing into isolation. That’s not something I want to keep doing.

If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
— Zora Neale Hurston

So let me hear from you — even just a line. It will give me a reason to keep going.

Oh, and one more thing! You can even chat with me here on Substack. Of course, feel free to do so if you’d like!

Take care!

Till soon!

Sajad

Read more

Arriving in London on December 8th for the QS Reimagine Education Awards & Conference 2024, I felt a mix of anticipation and introspection. The city welcomed me with sharp…

Read more

Maybe you’ve watched how schools sometimes feel more like pr…

Read more

The ongoing war in Ukraine is a profoundly complex and tragic event, raising questions that touch on the deepest layers of moral, political, and philosophical reasoning. It compels us to wrestle with…

Read more

Read more