Mohammad Jafar Mahallati is a Presidential Scholar of Religion at Oberlin College where he has taught courses on Islam, the Quran, and the Ethics of Forgiveness and Peacemaking. From 1987-1989, he served as Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations and was instrumental in brokering the peace agreement that ended the war between Iran and Iraq. He is currently working on a book project entitled Friendship in Muslim Cultures: Theory and Practice. He co-translated Sohrab Sepehri’s selected poems, The Oasis of Now, with Kazim Ali and was published by BOA Editions in 2013.