A former University of Arkansas professor, who was fired for antisemitic social media posts, is challenging the state’s campus antisemitism law and use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred.
Shirin Saeidi filed the complaint on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. She asked the court to strike down Arkansas Act 721, alleging that the campus antisemitism law violated her constitutional rights, because it singles out “adverse opinions regarding the State of Israel.”
Passed in 2025, the law prohibits antisemitism in schools and specifies the IHRA definition, including its “contemporary examples.” It notes that “criticism of Israel similar to the criticism leveled against any other country shall not be regarded as antisemitic,” which is consistent with the IHRA definition.
An Iranian-born Shia Muslim, Saeidi was a tenured political science professor and director of the university’s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies. She was fired for social media posts, using university letterhead, calling Israel “a terrorist and genocidal state that must be dismantled” and calling Ayatollah Ali Khomeini “the leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack.”
“May God protect you and the Iranian people from the Israeli regime,” she allegedly wrote.
She was also accused of sharing a post in December 2025 that read, “Warm blood, brave one, thrust the dagger from Doha into the throats of the Zionists, so that all of them howl.”
Her complaint alleges that university officials, along with Arkansas state senator Dan Sullivan, journalist Benjamin Weinthal and activists, coordinated to get her fired.
Saeidi argued that the state’s law justified her dismissal, and that it is “unconstitutionally vague” because “it makes the IHRA definition and its examples a standard of employee discipline.” She is seeking reinstatement and damages, and for the judge to strike down the state’s law.
