Aria Fani, an associate professor at University of Washington, who holds the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali professorship in Persian and Iranian studies and who directs the public Seattle school’s Persian and Iranian studies program, is the only one of 20 full-time faculty and staff members on the university’s webpage for its Middle Eastern languages and cultures program whose email address isn’t listed.
But JNS sought comment from him on Wednesday after the university removed him as director of the Middle East Center at its Jackson School of International Studies for sending an email newsletter framing Israel as the aggressor in the Iran war.
“On leave until September,” Fani stated in an autoreply to a JNS email. “Will not check email with capitalist frequency.”
The professor reportedly wrote in a March 18 newsletter, which he sent via the center’s listserv, that “Israeli actions tell us that they seek the destruction of the state, not just its ruling class.” The email, titled “More notes on the Iran war,” reportedly added that it “was always BS” that the Islamic Republic was pursuing nuclear weapons.
David Rey, associate director of strategic communications at the university, told the Daily, a student paper, on Wednesday that Fani is no longer the director of the center and that “Daniel Hoffman, the director of the Jackson School of International Studies, will cover the administrative responsibilities of the Middle East Center for this spring and summer.”
Hoffman called Fani on Friday to tell him he was no longer the center head and that he can “maintain his position as an associate professor at the university,” the student paper reported. The paper added that Fani said he and Hoffman have spoken multiple times about his email and believes it was the reason for his termination from the role. (JNS sought comment from the university.)
In July, Fani told the student newspaper that “if you tell the dozens of children that were killed in Israeli bombardment, that were killed in Iran, or the families of the nuclear scientists who were just wiped out—I hardly imagine they would say that the world is a more peaceful place.”
During a December 2024 launch for his book about “Afghans, Iranians and literary nationalism,” Fani accused Israel of “genocide funded by the United States and carried out by Israel” and called the Jewish state “a country that is behaving increasingly like a Nazi state.”
The UW Jewish Alumni Association wrote on March 27 that “if the director of UW’s Middle East Center cannot be counted on to share the relevant information students need when it counts, why have a Middle East Center at all?”
