Jennifer Westberg

Jennifer Westberg enjoyed a vibrant early childhood in Tehran, Iran, where she lived from 1965 to 1972, and she returned to visit Iran in 1978. She focused on the Iranian Revolution while earning her BA in History and has continued to be an avid student of Iranian history as it unfolds today. While not anguishing about current events, Jennifer enjoys oil painting. She earned a Masters in Fine Arts from The George Washington University.

Jennifer's father, the late John Westberg, was an international lawyer who moved to Iran as a U.S. State Department official in the 1960s. While in Tehran, he resigned from the State Department to work as a private citizen to establish the first Western-style law firm in Iran. He assisted in negotiations for the release of the American hostages during the Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981, and later handled claims under the historic Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal (IUSCT). He wrote a seminal 1991 book about case law related to the tribunal, "International Transactions and Claims Involving Government Parties: Case Law of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal," as well as a number of law journal articles on the topic. The College of William and Mary’s Special Collections Research Center holds his papers, which are available to researchers.

Learn more about the John Westberg papers at https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/repositories/2/resources/8059.