Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. He is an award-winning author. He has authored four books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel.

Parsi’s latest book – Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2017) – reveals the “behind the scenes” story to the nuclear deal with Iran.

He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East.

He has been named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy in Washington DC for five years in a row since 2021, and preeminent public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls Parsi “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran.”

Sydney University academics Professor John Keane and Dr Nick Riemer have been taken to the Australian Federal Court, as their own colleagues lodged an antisemitism complaint against them. The reason: Being outspoken against the state of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

"Opinions expressed in this conversation are personal and do NOT reflect the opinions or policy of the University of Sydney."

John Keane is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. His latest book is ‘Thinking About Democracy in Turbulent Times’: Sorbonne Lectures (2025). His ‘Open Letter on Israel, Palestine, Genocide and Toleration’ helped trigger the lawfare case against him and Nick Riemer.

Dr Nick Reimer is a Linguistics academic at the University of Sydney and a long-time participant in the Palestine solidarity movement in Australia. He is the author of ‘Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine’ (2023), on the academic boycott of Israel.