Roya Hakakian, a writer whose work often deals with the topics of exile, displacement, political and religious persecution, and the struggle of people—especially women—against authoritarianism, will present “The Plight of Women in Israel and Iran, and the Silence of Feminists” at Boston College on January 31. Her address will be held in Gasson Hall, room 100, at 7 p.m. Free, reserved seating found here. Hakakian is the founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She was born and raised in a family of Jewish educators in Tehran, and arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 1985. Her acclaimed memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran, details the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. She also is the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, an account of the 1992 murders of four Iranian-Kurdish leaders in Berlin, Germany, and her most recent book, A Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious, which has been called a “love letter” to America and its democracy. She has also written essays and opinion pieces for New York Times, New York Review of the Books, and the Atlantic, among other outlets. Her lecture is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Series and is co-sponsored by the International Studies Program, Islamic Civilization and Societies Program, and with the support of an Institute for the Liberal Arts Major Grant.