About 18 months ago, I along with my colleague professor D. Ray Heisey from Kent State University prepared a paper on the schemata of Iranians and Americans have for each other. I planned to present it in the I International Conference on Intercultural Studies which was going to be held in Portugal by December 2008. The story of this conference was so strange which I decided to share it to others. All things seemed to be natural until I asked conference managers to send me a formal invitation. I don’t know what happened but they suddenly turned to an extraordinarily hostile stance towards me. They removed my name from the list of participants after they accepted our paper. Later on they tried to force me to tell lie!

Iranians always are surprised when they know that the people of the world perceive them as ignorant, violent, aggressive and dangerous. In fact, when media symbolize Iranians with violence and nuclear bomb, there is no surprise that lay people generalize these images to the Iranians. The surprising part of this story is that those who easily had so insulting behavior with were Intercultural Communication scholars. Iranians have so many problems. They are kind people do not want hurt anybody. This could be understood only if foreigners can travel to Iran and meet Iranians in person.

From: Centro de Estudos Interculturais - ISCAP

Subject: I International Conference on Intercultural Studies

Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 2:52 PM

Dear Colleague,

Mrs. Clara Sarmento has informed me that you will pay the registration in the I International Conference on Intercultural Studies, exceptionally, upon your arrival at the conference on December 9th. Nevertheless, I would ask you to send us the registration form, which you can find as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

Dear colleague,

Attached is my registration form.

Ehsan

From: Centro de Estudos Interculturais - ISCAP

Subject: RE: Registration

To: "'ehsan shaghasemi'"

Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 3:27 PM

Dear Ehsan,

Thank you for your quick reply.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

The Organizing Committee

Centre for Intercultural Studies

Dear colleague,

Hello and how are you. Unfortunately, the Portugal embassy in Iran does not accept email acceptance. They told me a faxed invitation letter from you is sufficient. If issuing invitation is not possible for you by any reason, you can fax the acceptance of my work to the embassy. Here is their fax number : +98-21-22552668

After faxing the letter, I will appreciate if you tell me the number/date/ and memo of the letter.

Yours

 Ehsan

Dear colleague,

Some days ago I’ve sent you an email that could be find below, but unfortunately it was not responded. As I mentioned in the previous memo if issuing invitation is not possible for you, at least inform me to find another solution.
Yours
Ehsan

From: cei@iscap.ipp.pt <cei@iscap.ipp.pt
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: Registration
Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 12:04 PM
Dear Ehsan,
It is our strict policy and habit to reply to every message from our delegates, as long as we receive those messages. Now bearing in mind the content of the request you have just forwarded, we regret to inform that we cannot issue, by any means, any kind of document other
than the e-mail acceptance you've already received.
With our very best regards,
The Organization

Dear Colleague,
Hello and how are you. I can understand your limitations. Let me try another way. Can you send me an email and say I have successfully registered for the conference? Just this simple sentence will be sufficient. I'll take photo of my email page and give it to Portugal Embassy in Tehran.
Yours
Ehsan

From: cei@iscap.ipp.pt <cei@iscap.ipp.pt
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: Registration
 To: ehsanshaghasemi@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 3:39 PM
Dear Colleague,
Certainly, here it goes:
Ehsan Shaghasemi's (Department of Communications, the University of Tehran) paper "The cross-cultural schemata of Iranian-American people toward each other: A qualitative approach" has been approved to be presented at the I International Conference on Intercultural Studies and he has already
sent his registration form.
Sincerely,
The Organization

From: ehsan shaghasemi <ehsanshaghasemi@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: Registration
To: cei@iscap.ipp.pt
 Date: Monday, November 17, 2008, 4:20 PM
Dear Colleague,
I was checking the conference website right know but unfortunately I saw  my name has been swept from your website. Is there any problem. Should I  do something?
Yours
Ehsan

Dear Colleague,
  It seems that despite your "strict policy and habit to reply to every message" from delegates, nobody wants to answer me that what is going on there. But there are still some points to be discussed.
   1-      When you announce a "call for papers", you are supposed to be responsible about its peripheral requirements, particularly when this call for papers is in the field Intercultural Communications.
 Naturally, delegates may need formal invitations, mailed signed acceptances and so on. If by any reason, it is not possible, you are supposed to exempt some trouble making countries from your conference list. In your call for papers I can't see such an exception:  In order to proceed with these purposes, CEI organizes and hosts the I International Conference on Intercultural Studies, on 9 December 2008, directed towards all those teachers, students, and national and international researchers who develop an active interest for the vas field of Intercultural Studies.
   2-      Anyway if you became aware of the problem later, you could   simply tell me to leave the process. This is six month that I am working hard to get the visa of your country. I went to your embassy many times. Because you didn't approve me formally, the embassy asked more documents to prove my loyalty. I am not criticizing them because they were doing their job. Of course, when the host throws the guest out, the police will be suspicious of him. They asked me to be insured under an international insurance. They asked me to reserve the ticket. They asked me to reserve a hotel and pay the dues. They asked me documents to show that I will come back to my country! They asked me to give an account
  number in my name with 20000$ inventory. They even asked me to show them two thousand dollars in cash before giving visa to me. I prepared all documents and one of my relatives transferred the money to my account, although a benevolent lady in the embassy said that it is not needed. I perceived it as a natural way of participating in a conference but what makes me angry is that I promised my colleague to present our work there. You made me a liar. Who is responsible for my damaged reputation?
   3-      Anyway, despite all of these, at least, you could take the responsibility and apologize. You are scholars. What are you thinking   of yourselves?
 
 Yours
  Ehsan from Iran

From: Centro de Estudos Interculturais - ISCAP <cei@iscap.ipp.pt
Subject: RE: Re: Fw: RE: Registration
To: "'ehsanshaghasemi@yahoo.com'"
Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 3:53 PM
Dear Mr. Ehsan Shaghasemi,
   We sincerely regret all the trouble this situation is causing you. We have issued all the documents we are legally allowed to issue. We just need a confirmation that you have actually obtained a Visa. Please bear in mind that we have made an exception by allowing you to pay upon your arrival to the conference.  If you tell us that you already have a Visa, we will include once again in the online program.
 Once again, we regret all the trouble this situation has caused.
 Best regards,
 The Organizing Committee

From: ehsan shaghasemi <ehsanshaghasemi@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: Re: Fw: RE: Registration
To: "Centro de Estudos Interculturais - ISCAP"
 Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 9:07 AM
 Dear Colleague,
 Thanks for your reply and I do apologize for inconvenience I have made for you. Certainly, getting visa from EU embassies have special procedure. One rule is that they give visa only 3 or 4 days before flight so I can't tell you that I have the visa right now but the fact is that I have prepared all documents and even extra documents and the embassy employees have orally told me that "there is no problem".
 Apropos, I can't understand what you are afraid of. You are not responsible for anything. You have just a conference and have no responsibility for the delegations. If the issue was "trust" I could provide necessary documents just as I did for your embassy. Anyway I am going to talk about it with my colleague and then we will negotiate about how to make trust.
 Yours
 Ehsan