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An Iranian exile<\/span> group colluded with university officials and a state lawmaker in Arkansas in a relentless, ultimately successful campaign to get an Iranian American professor fired, according to a new lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shirin Saeidi, a tenured professor of political science at the University of Arkansas was removed from her post as the director of the school\u2019s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies in December over social media posts critical of Israel \u2014 a move that a national free-speech group criticized in a letter to the university.<\/p>\n Despite a unanimous vote by a faculty committee recommending her reinstatement, Saeidi was fired from the university in March, a decision that was upheld in May after an appeal by the professor.<\/p>\n The firing came after a monthslong campaign by the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, an Iranian American group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.<\/p>\n The group lobbied the university with accusations that Saeidi was working on behalf of the Iranian government and allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University \u2014 both of which Saeidi has strenuously denied.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen someone tries to take everything from you, and your identity, your scholarship, your entire labor of your adult life through framing you and lying to the media \u2014 it works,\u201d Saeidi told The Intercept. \u201cIt makes people doubt you, and this is the big issue with defamation. So it\u2019s been shocking to experience it, but I was not surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n The 15-count suit seeks to void Saeidi\u2019s termination and award her back pay and damages. It also aims to overturn Act 721, a law signed in April 2025 by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which allows the state to cut off public funds to any academic institution found to have allowed or failed to act against antisemitism.<\/p>\n \u201cThis law is a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Ultimately, it was that mechanism of state authority \u2014 combined with pressure on the university from a state senator \u2014 that appears to have driven Saeidi\u2019s dismissal, according to Badria Mryyan, one of the attorneys representing her.<\/p>\n \u201cThis law is a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection,\u201d Mryyan said. \u201cAct 721 is a deterrent of free speech and a deterrent of academic freedom, and it\u2019s clear to us that the university had a real fear response to any mention of Act 721, but particularly when it was coming from legislators.\u201d<\/p>\n The drive to get Saeidi fired from her job came amid a broader push to target Iranian and Iranian American academics and journalists \u2014 one that for years has featured violent death threats and highly personal attacks on people arguing for diplomacy with the Iranian government.<\/p>\n With President Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House, however, these attacks have gained more purchase as they dovetailed with the administration\u2019s focus on left-wing<\/a> and pro-Palestine academics<\/a> and activists<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a case of a person expressing their viewpoints on their own personal Twitter pages, and when an investigation was conducted to see if they violated university rules, the university employees said no,\u201d said Leonard Bright, a professor of public service and administration at Texas A&M and a regional representative for the American Association of University Professors. \u201cFor the university president to come and override that, that\u2019s highly disturbing, and it compromises the faculty member\u2019s freedom to speak her mind about issues of public concern. And that reaction is certainly going to chill other faculty members\u2019 willingness to address difficult topics.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The campaign against Saeidi was spearheaded by Lawdan Bazargan, who is listed as the AAIRIA\u2019s director in publicly filed documents, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n The organization, which describes itself as a \u201cgroup of former political prisoners in Iran, families of executed political prisoners, human rights activists who work (seeking) justice and accountability,\u201d has mounted a number of similar campaigns against Iranian and Iranian American academics and journalists who it accuses of supporting the Iranian government.<\/p>\n In a statement to The Intercept, Bazargan rejected the idea that she had conspired with others to secure Saeidi\u2019s termination.<\/p>\n \u201cI categorically deny the allegations that I defamed Dr. Shirin Saeidi or participated in any secret conspiracy or collusion with Benjamin Weinthal, Senator Dan Sullivan, or University of Arkansas officials to have her terminated,\u201d Bazargan wrote. \u201cThe suggestion that there was some coordinated conspiracy among us is simply false. We publicly raised concerns and asked institutions, elected officials, and journalists to examine them. What they chose to do afterward was entirely their decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Fired from her job, forced to defend herself against allegations of serious misconduct, Saeidi said her life has been upended by the campaign against her.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really damaging to not just my career, but to my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to leave Arkansas because I no longer feel safe. People that go to my child\u2019s school, people that I see at the grocery store, people that see me at the gym \u2014 they think I\u2019m a terrorist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople that go to my child\u2019s school, people that I see at the grocery store, people that see me at the gym \u2014 they think I\u2019m a terrorist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Now, Saeidi is hitting back with the lawsuit. In the 88-page complaint filed Monday evening in federal court in Arkansas, Saeidi and her lawyers accused the Iranian American pressure group, university officials, GOP state Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Jerusalem-based pro-Israel pundit Ben Weinthal of colluding in a defamatory conspiracy against her right to free speech motivated by Islamophobia and a desire to stamp out pro-Palestine speech.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Shirin Saeidi, because of her work in her field and her advocacy and protected speech, was subject to a coordinated harassment campaign that was able to take advantage of a broader attack on academic freedom at the federal and state levels,\u201d said Connor Thompson, one of the attorneys representing Saeidi. \u201cWe are hoping to vindicate the rights of our client, who has really had her life ruined.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither a spokesperson for the University of Arkansas nor Dan Sullivan, the state senator named in the lawsuit, responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Bazargan began targeting Saeidi on March 24, 2025, by submitting a formal complaint to the chancellor of the University of Arkansas. The following day, Bazargan appeared on an Israeli news program accusing Saeidi and other professors in the U.S. of supporting the Iranian government.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s accusations against Saeidi initially centered on the professor\u2019s testimony in a Swedish trial against an Iranian official accused of having a hand in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. Bazargan\u2019s brother, she said, was killed in the mass execution.<\/p>\n In the ensuing months, Bazargan wrote numerous letters to university officials, many of which she posted online, accusing Saeidi of expressing \u201copen admiration for Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader\u201d and being \u201cideologically aligned with Hezbollah\u201d \u2014 a federally designated terror group.<\/p>\n As the months went on, Bazargan widened the scope of her allegations to accuse Saeidi of committing plagiarism and other scholarly sins while working on her doctoral dissertation at Cambridge, work that was later published as a book on the condition of women in the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n In an interview with The Intercept, Saeidi said she took particular issue with accusations that she had downplayed human rights violations by the Iranian government or that she had committed plagiarism or other academic misconduct in her research.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my book, I actually document the human rights violations of the 1980 to \u201988 period,\u201d Saeidi said. \u201cI interview women and men who were in prison at that time, and I listen to their stories. There is absolutely no denial on my part that there were human rights violations that occurred from 1980 to \u201988, and that people suffered unjustly because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI No Longer Feel Safe\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Raft of Allegations<\/h2>\n