In October 1963 I was an undergraduate at the new University of York, and there first encountered the wonderful, cascading laugh of fellow student Haleh Afshar. She was happy to dispute with lecturers, students – or just about anybody – while retaining an apparently effortless charm.
When interviewed by the local glossy, Yorkshire Life magazine, she said: “I intend to be the first ambassadress for Persia.” In the event she proved to be a true ambassador for Iran, fearless, feminist, and a democrat from a land of ayatollahs.
Nigel Fountain
Twenty-five years after Haleh Afshar and I became friends at York, a marketing-minded vice-chancellor produced a brochure featuring distinguished graduates/alumni. All were male.
Haleh must have steamed into his office with her invincible laugh, to gain backing for an alternative brochure. All women.
With Valerie Atkinson and Liz Maynard, Haleh interviewed not only female alumni, but those who had made the university: the secretaries, librarians, cleaners and catering staff, switchboard operators and scholars. The Other 25 Years is a treasured collective memoir of the times.
Amanda Sebestyen
As a postgrad at Bradford University in 1979 I believed I had discovered a new form of economics, that the cost of something was the amount of labour needed to make it. I excitedly told my supervisor, Haleh Afshar. She gave me volume one of Karl Marx’s Capital: “Come back when you have read it.”
I did. Haleh changed my life.
Bob Cannell
