Dr. Saeid Golkar is a faculty member of the Department of Political Science and Public Service. Photo by Angela Foster.
In a world that’s constantly changing, where verified information is at a premium, experts must share their knowledge on topics that require context, perspective and nuance.
At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, two faculty members are using their expertise to educate the public and advise policymakers on a complex and evolving conflict in the Middle East.
For Dr. Saeid Golkar and Dr. Annie Tracy Samuel, the region isn’t a random part of the globe; both have deep ties to it and see public scholarship as part of their responsibility.
Golkar, a UC Foundation associate professor of political science, was born and raised in Iran and later moved to the United States to pursue a career as a professor and researcher.
Tracy Samuel, an associate professor of history, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Israel.
“I am Jewish,” Tracy Samuel said, “and I certainly feel a responsibility to have my voice be heard, given how difficult that is for many people—especially at this time. I want to use my voice and my position in service of the cause of justice, peace and putting an end to conflicts that have caused far too many deaths and far too much destruction.”
Golkar used the Japanese term “ikigai” in reference to his work and family, which translates to “a reason for being.”
“My intellectual ikigai is helping people to achieve their dream of freedom, dismantling dictatorships, collapsing dictatorships everywhere around the world, for me and more importantly in my country and in the region,” Golkar said.
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Pam Riggs-Gelasco highlighted the importance of their work.
“With the current war in Iran, both Dr. Golkar and Dr. Tracy Samuel are being contacted by international government agencies, foreign media outlets and think tanks to provide important historical and political context to the conflict,” Riggs-Gelasco said. “Their expertise has a worldwide impact.”
Both have published extensively on Iran and the Middle East.
Golkar’s first book, “Captive Society: The Basij Mobilization and Social Control in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was published in 2015 and won the Washington Institute Silver Medal.
He recently published his second book, “Dictators and the Higher Education Dilemma: State Power and the University in Modern Iran,” which examines how authoritarian regimes try to incorporate higher education into their toolkit for maintaining political order.
“I’m trying to write mostly for two reasons,” Golkar said. “First, to inform public audiences about what is happening, what happened, what we are doing wrong and what we have to do. The other part of it is for people who are shaping policy, like Congress, the State Department and intelligence organizations.”
Tracy Samuel’s book, “The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,” gives historical context to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps by using the Iran-Iraq War as a focal point.
Dr. Annie Tracy Samuel is a faculty member of the Department of History.
She emphasized the importance of historical context when discussing current events in the region.
“The war with Iran is incredibly complex and it requires analysis from a variety of angles,” Tracy Samuel said. “For me as a historian, I think it’s really important to get a historical perspective because we really can’t understand relations between Iran and the United States and the current conflict without looking to the past.”
She said historical perspective is often missing from public discussion, even though it is essential for understanding U.S.-Iran relations and the broader regional conflict.
Both also meet with government policymakers to lend their expertise.
Tracy Samuel is president of the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Policy Council and has presented her work at the Middle East Studies Association, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies and the American Historical Association.
Tracy Samuel has also participated in policy briefings for a wide variety of government agencies in the United States and other countries and said it’s encouraging that decision-makers want to hear from historians and political scientists.
“I have found that people in government … know that policymaking is about the near future, and they want that academic perspective to help them think about the long term and better guide the decision-makers,” she said.
Golkar has similarly spoken with the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, as well as the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and United Nations-related bodies.
He also serves as a senior advisor to United Against Nuclear Iran, a senior fellow at the Middle East Forum, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a senior associate fellow at the Center for Middle East and Global Order.
“The whole idea is how we can make sure that the United States has a better policy, a more informed policy about the Middle East,” Golkar said.
When media requests come in, the two experts take different approaches.
Tracy Samuel has been featured on The Hill, Lawfare, CNN, The Atlantic and ABC News, where she provides historical context on current events.
“I try to select the interviews that I do carefully,” she said, “and to focus on ones that are looking for that kind of historical expertise and context, that also really focus on the specific things that I study—which are Iran’s military and the Iran-Iraq War—and look for that to put this in a broader context.”
While Tracy Samuel uses a more judicious interview selection process, Golkar takes a different approach.
“I try to say yes to any media who come to me,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter and it takes a lot of my time, honestly. I interview in the middle of the night when my kid and my wife are asleep and then in the morning with a different one, because I want other people to think about the policy.”
Golkar said he wants media appearances to push audiences to question whether policy decisions were effective and what consequences they produced.
Asking questions is why Golkar was interested in political science: the ability to understand and communicate issues. He said he was drawn by a desire to understand why Iran and other countries in the region struggle politically and economically. He later taught at universities in Iran before being fired for views critical of the government.
Because the Iranian state controls the universities, if someone is fired by one institution, they can no longer teach at another. Golkar eventually secured a postdoctoral research position at Stanford University, describing himself as “lucky.”
Tracy Samuel was in Israel in June 2025 when an armed conflict between Iran and Israel began. She was planning to conduct research and visit family and was scheduled to fly back to the U.S. on the second day of the war, before flights were canceled.
She recalled the time as “terrifying.”
“It was really mind-blowing,” she said. “In terms of just finding myself in the middle of the thing that I study, without planning to be in the middle of it.”
Golkar explained that his goal when speaking with anyone about the subject is to be honest.
“An Italian historiographer said, ‘Impartiality is a dream, honesty is a beauty,’” Golkar recalled. “I really believe that. I’m not impartial … I hate dictatorship. I hate anybody who supports this kind of regime. The regime that killed 40,000 of its own people in two days is not normal.
“There is no justification for the event. But at the same time, I try to be honest. I try to say what they did well, what they did badly, but the media is very, very polarized and I can tell political science is polarized too.”
Tracy Samuel explained that her passion for history stems from curiosity about the world around her and a desire to positively shape the present.
“I am someone who is profoundly motivated by justice,” Tracy Samuel said. “I am absolutely motivated by a desire not to see armed conflict and not to see people die; that’s something that I have held and continue to hold regardless of my personal experience.
“I think that comes from a humanistic place, and my interest in history has always been guided by how history can inform the present. I’ve always been interested in history for its own sake, to help us understand the past, but also in using the past to understand the present.”
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