Soheil Asefi is an independent journalist and political analyst in New York. He is studying political science at The New School University. He left Iran some years ago after a ten-year professional experience of major Iranian media outlets. He was behind bars in 209 ward of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison in 2007 and spent most of his incarceration in solitary confinement. He was released on an unprecedented amount of bail for a journalist at the time. He came to Germany as the guest of the City of Nuremberg under the project 'Writers in Exile' funded by the German PEN Center and is the recipient of the prestigious German Hermann Kasten award in Nuremberg. He is a member of the editorial board of “Journalists in Exile” runs by Reporters without Borders in Berlin.He has written extensively on the dimensions of democratization, human rights and neoliberalism in the Middle East, particularly Iran today. Soheil Asefi can be reached on Twitter.