Masih Alinejad is an Iranian-American journalist, a women’s rights campaigner, and the author of the best-selling memoir The Wind in My Hair. In 2023, TIME named Alinejad one of the women of the year, and she was elected President of the World Liberty Congress. She is one of the most prominent and vocal figures challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran. The New York Times has described Masih as “The woman whose hair frightens Iran.” Masih was born in a tiny village in the north of Iran. As a teenager, she was arrested and jailed for producing a student newspaper. She became a parliamentary journalist and worked for a number of reformist newspapers in Tehran. However, her articles frequently landed her in trouble. In 2014, she launched the My Stealthy Freedom campaign against compulsory hijab, which became the largest civil disobedience movement in the history of the Islamic Republic. Today, Masih continues to write and host Tablet, a satirical weekly show on VOA. She has been honored with several awards, including sharing the 2022 Oxi Courage award with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the 2022 Washington Institute’s Statesman-Scholar award, and the American Jewish Committee’s Moral Courage award."
