Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi explained the importance on salad’s method of preparation at the 70th annual Borah Symposium Monday.
The ingredients of a good salad taste well when tossed or mixed together, Ebadi, the human rights activist and lawyer said through a translator.
“Just imagine putting all these ingredients in a blender and blending them,” she said. “What’s that going to taste like? If we want all of the people in a society to think like us, what we’re doing is the same as that blender.”
According to CNN, Ebadi’s 2003 Nobel Peace Prize made her the first Iranian to ever win the award. She was awarded “for her efforts for democracy and human rights,” the Nobel Prize website said. Ebadi is the sixth Nobel Peace Prize recipient to speak at the Borah Symposium since 1983, according to the event pamphlet.
She was appointed Chief Magistrate of 26th Divisional Court in Tehran in 1975, making her the first woman to fill the position, but she retired from judging a few years later after all Iranian female judges were dismissed, according to the event’s website.
After retirement, she switched seats in the courtroom as she began practicing law privately in 1992, CNN said. She defended many political activists and others in several controversial human rights cases, until she was incarcerated by the Islamic Republic, the event’s website said.
With funds from her award, she headed two non-governmental organizations to aid political prisoners, according to a CNN article entitled ‘Iran keeps Nobel laureate’s office shut.’
In 2008, the office that housed both NGOs was raided by security forces before being shut down by the Iranian government.
In her keynote speech for the event, she spoke on the importance of tolerance, fostering peace in youth and root-cause problem solving approaches.
Peace and care for the environment must be taught to children at a young age, Ebadi said.
“If we don’t raise them that way, how could a 70-year-old embody it in politics?” she said. “It must be taught to know it.”
Ebadi advised against rushing to solutions for social issues, as she said the root cause of the issue will go often ignored. She said she feels the United States is making a mistake with its vehement military campaign against the Islamic State — and it is a mistake they have made before with the Taliban.
Simply bombing these foes does not diminish the group, rather she said it strengthened the Taliban. A better route for winning against these ideological adversaries is through education, Ebadi said.
“I have always said instead of bombs, throw books at ISIS,” she said, causing laughter from the crowd of nearly 400 that filled the International Ballroom. “You will see that you will clear the world from them.”
This same root cause approach should be applied to women’s violence, she said, as the root cause is the patriarchal culture of people who don’t believe in equality, which is not just men in general.
“Although women are victims of this wrong culture, they can be conveyers of these cultures as well,” Ebadi said. “So, let’s not forget that all men who oppressed people were raised by women. I often compare patriarchy to the disease hemophelia — women who have this disease usually transfer it to their male children and not their female children. The same thing is true about the patriarchal culture.”
Kyle Pfannenstiel can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @pfannyyy
Update: Oct. 19, 2017
On Oct. 19, the following passage was added to the article: “She was appointed Chief Magistrate of 26th Divisional Court in Tehran in 1975, making her the first woman to fill the position, but she retired from judging a few years later after all Iranian female judges were dismissed, according to the event’s website.”