A trafficking expert spent 30 years on Iran. Here's what she knows.

What do we do next?The story Professor Hughes told me about how she found this movement has been rattling around my head since Paris, and the lesson in it is bigger than Iran. So here’s the assignment, from a woman who’s given thirty years to a cause that isn’t even her own country.* Lead with the people, not your own pain. A man stopped Donna on a London street in 1995 with a binder full of photos of women executed in Iran. He talked about all of them, page after page, who they were, what they did, before he mentioned, almost in passing, that one of them was his wife. He centered the women, not his grief. That’s the move. When you care about something, talk about the people it’s happening to, not how it makes you feel. It lands harder and it isn’t about you.* Trust your gut about people, then act on it. She said the thing she relies on most now is how a person makes her feel, that old instinct women used to call picking up creep vibes. She’s learned to turn it on deliberately. In thirty years around this movement, she never got that vibe off the people in it. Your instinct about who’s real is data. Stop overriding it to be polite.* Refuse to stop talking, especially when they won’t. Her hardest experience wasn’t a difficult conversation, it was the flat refusal to have one. A university came after her over a single essay and nobody would even engage. We’re brushing too much under the rug to keep the peace. So have the lunch, with the friend you’ve been avoiding the subject with. Not on a stage. At the table.That’s the work. Here’s the conversation that got me there.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The conversationThis one’s for anyone who knows something is wrong, remembers when people connected differently, and feels that deficit but doesn’t know what to do with it. Professor Hughes named that feeling exactly, and she’d know.You should know who she is, because her authority on this runs deep. Professor Donna Hughes holds an endowed chair in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island, has a PhD from Penn State, and is one of the world’s leading researchers on human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women, work that’s taken her into the field in the US, Russia, Ukraine, and Korea and in front of Congress to testify. This is a scholar who has spent her career documenting violence against women and women’s resistance to it. So when she first heard Maryam Rajavi speak in 1996 and felt the hair rise on her arms, it wasn’t a tourist’s reaction. It was an expert recognizing something she’d never seen before: women’s liberation theory already being lived in practice.But the story that floored me came before all that. The first person from the resistance she ever met was a man, in London in 1995, who stopped her on the street while she was Christmas shopping. He had a big three-ring binder. He asked if he could talk to her about women, and as a women’s studies scholar, of course she said yes. He opened the binder and it was full of photographs, page after page of women executed in Iran. Many of them professional women. And only after telling her about all of them did he say his own wife was among them. She kept thinking, who is this man? She’d never heard a man talk about women this way, moved enough to stop strangers on the street over what was happening to the women of his country. It was years before she realized he was a member of the resistance. She still scans the faces of the men at these conferences wondering if he’s there, if she’d recognize him.That’s the integrity moment, and it’s why the whole movement earned her trust: people who lead with the cause and bury their own staggering losses. She told me there are women she’s known for years before learning, offhand, what they survived. They just keep doing the work. You can’t fake that, and you can’t manufacture thirty years of it.We also get into the fragmentation tearing women’s organizing apart, her own run-in with cancel culture, and why, in a sea of disinformation about Iran, she trusts the resistance’s sourced books over almost anything else.Meet Professor Donna HughesProfessor Donna Hughes holds the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair in the Gender and Women’s Studies program at the University of Rhode Island. She earned her PhD from Penn State and is one of the leading international researchers on human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and girls, with field research spanning the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Korea. She has testified before Congress on trafficking and has written extensively on violence against women, women’s rights in the Islamic world, and women’s organized resistance to oppression. She has supported the Iranian resistance since 1996.Worth pulling out* The man with the binder in London, 1995. He showed her every woman before he mentioned his own wife was one of them. The whole movement, in one stranger.* On trusting her gut: thirty years around the resistance, she never once got a “creep vibe” off the people in it. Instinct as evidence.* The women she’s known for years who never mentioned what they’d survived, including a 72-day hunger strike she only learned about from Molly. They just keep doing the work.Chapters00:00 Who Professor Donna Hughes is 00:40 Thirty years, and the 1996 moment that gave her chills 02:30 This year’s message: we have to continue 03:30 The men in the movement, and the binder in London 07:30 What keeps her coming back after 30 years 09:30 A message for women who are struggling 11:30 Fragmentation and the refusal to talk 13:00 Surviving cancel culture, and trusting your gut 16:30 Kindness you can feel, and sacrifices never mentioned 19:00 Cutting through disinformation on Iran 22:00 Where to start: the resistance’s sourced booksConnect with the movementNational Council of Resistance of Iran: ncr-iran.orgBefore you goIf you’ve got a conversation you’ve been avoiding to keep the peace, send this to the person you’ve been avoiding it with. Then have it.Listening is the revolution. MollyThanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.Listen next: The legal case for a free Iran, with Izabela Konopacka The full series: The Iranian resistance has a plan. Do we? Get full access to What do we do next? at whatdowedonext.substack.com/subscribe