Beyond Hope, Beyond Triumph

ISSH’s Mission and Why It Deserves Support Now - By Mana Khosrowshahi

Nov 25, 2025

Hope is a dangerous emotion. It has hurt me -so much- to hope and be disappointed; so, I try not to hope.

We live in systems that tend to marginalize good and amplify evil; crisis after crisis unfold before our eyes, and as the supposedly most powerful species to live on this Earth, with innovations that have transformed everything in this world, we still seem incapable of transforming the very systems we have created.

Effort and outcome are not proportionate in this world. It takes SO much energy to achieve the smallest amount of good, which can then slip away -revert back- so easily in the blink of an eye.

There is a Persian saying, “To want something is to be able to do it”; it’s meant to emphasize the power of will. I find it to be -frankly- bullshit! It completely ignores all structures of power that shape our lives; I find it disrespectful to the millions who have wanted and not been able to.

All this is to clarify my position on grand solutions: I do not believe in them. I’ve come to accept that we might not be powerful enough, even in our greatest numbers, to make things sustainably better. I do not believe in an imminent triumph, but I’ve also learned that victory is not the most important thing: resistance is.

Resistance is refusing to abandon the turf despite knowing you might very well lose.

Resistance is holding your head up high as you watch them crush your goals.

Resistance is not giving up your seat even though the table is being destroyed.

Resistance is prioritizing your values in a valueless world.

Resistance is knowing that 2 + 2 = 4.

Resistance is holding on to a vision of good, of utopia, of a better tomorrow. You don’t have to hope it will be realized, you don’t have to believe it’s feasible, you just have to know that there is another way, because no matter how hopeless we are, there is only one sure way to guarantee that a better tomorrow will never arrive: and that is not knowing it could.

What has this gotten to do with ISSH?

ISSH is the epitome of resistance.

It is created by people who embody resistance: refusing to be silenced or marginalized and creating a way for knowledge to flow across the borders of oppression and for alternative voices to be amplified.

It features people who embody resistance: coming together from around the world to declare a commitment to knowledge, freedom, and possibilities of better tomorrows.

It is also the embodiment of what resistance could achieve: an institution born from an unorthodox vision challenging the rules and structures of this world, and yet enduring and expanding for 12 years, producing and disseminating knowledge in service of the community.

Resistance is power because it is non-sensical and irrational. Homo economicus would not stare in the face of oppression and keep building a house that is constantly destroyed.

Resistance is power because it confuses the powerful: if you keep doing what you do despite their best efforts to shut you down, you must be very strong, dangerously strong: because it takes extraordinary strength to hold your empty fist up in the air for a long time, more than it would to lift a heavy weight for a short while.

That’s how ISSH, an educational institution small in its size and stretched in its resources (two things that have never held it back from pulling off mighty projects), is deemed powerful enough by a militarized authoritarian regime to be an agent of a “soft overthrow” plot.

Resistance can muster up enough strength to scare the most powerful, and ISSH exemplifies this in the best possible way.

So, resistance is impactful regardless of the outcome. It is its persistence that contributes to its impact, and I want to ask you to support ISSH and its persisting resistance.

I’ve tried to appeal to the hopeless of the world in this rant because I know what it feels like to crawl back into the personal sphere as the social one seems daunting, I know the ache of not being powerful enough to make things better, but we are still powerful enough to hold down small forts in some corners of the world, making sure our vision is protected, so that if there ever exists a space for it to be realized, it is remembered.

If you don’t think a better day will come, that is ok. If you are not sure we can ever win, I share your doubt. But let us protect the possibility, let us breathe life into this glorious project of resistance, let us make sure ISSH is preserved as a space for dreamers, let us resist the erasure of alternative ways.