Yale Law School associate research scholar Helyeh Doutaghi, who describes herself as an Iranian-Muslim, was placed on administrative leave and later terminated following an article published by an online news site that detailed her involvement with the U.S.-designated terrorist group—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fundraiser Samidoun.
In a letter on March 12 addressing her suspension and the article on Jewish Onliner, which calls itself “AI-empowered,” Doutaghi denied the terror allegations, claiming they were generated by artificial intelligence. She also said the suspension was a violation of free speech. In the letter, Doutaghi asked “every professor, scholar, researcher, student and member of the community to stand up and speak out publicly against Yale Law School operating as an extension of the fascist state apparatus.”
As the only Iranian international student at Yale College who was born, raised and completed all of his pre-college education in Iran, I agree with fellow Iranian nationals that Yale does support fascist states—or at least, the Yale population does. The admiration is mutual. The Islamic Republic’s news agencies praise my schoolmates and professors for spreading the “axis of resistance” narrative on campus. Iranian leader Ali Khamenei even sent a “thank you” letter to anti-Israel protesters.
Doutaghi’s suspension drew immediate attention from the state-sponsored Iranian media. While the regime agencies were praising her, it didn’t take long for non-regime-affiliated Iranians to begin posting about Doutaghi’s history of support for the Islamic Republic. Her father, Hassan Doutaghi, is currently the acting head of Iran’s consulate general in Hong Kong. He was removed from his post at the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Canada in 2012 due to concerns that “the Islamic regime is using its mission here to monitor the activities of Iranian-Canadians.”
After her father’s removal, Doutaghi remained in Canada, where she went to law school and wrote her dissertation on the harms of sanctions against Iran. She has lived most of her life in a free country, away from sanctions. We Iranians who have actually endured life under these sanctions know that hyperbolizing their impact only helps the regime avoid responsibility. Some Iranians abroad abuse the freedom granted to them by Western countries to hijack our voice, portray themselves as representatives of oppressed Iranians and advocate for the same things as our oppressor—the Islamic Republic. To us, people like Helyeh Doutaghi, whose actions benefit the Islamic regime by bolstering its narrative, are no different than the mullahs.
In her letter, Doutaghi—like the Islamic Republic—uses “Zionist” as a slur when referring to her detractors. In the past, she has called Iranians “Zionists.” During the Iranian people’s “Women, Life, Freedom” protests following the morality police’s brutal killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, Doutaghi repeated Khamenei’s claim that our protests were “hijacked” by Zionists and used her platform in Western academia to twist the narrative about Iranian resistance against the regime.
My people do not want the children of our oppressors to speak for us.
For decades, Iranians have resisted the Islamic Republic’s terrors and ethnic cleansing—from the deserts of Sistan and the Baluchestan province to the dense jungles and tall Zagros mountains of Kurdistan province—whether by simply removing the cloth of oppression from their heads or by using barbed wires and Molotov cocktails to deter regime’s military forces. Meanwhile, the real fascist and imperialist minority in power massacres Baluchis after Friday prayers, mows down Kurdish teens with machine guns, kidnaps Iranian journalists, and hates Iran and Iranians. The Shia terrorists Doutaghi supports and portrays as oppressed representatives of Iran are, in fact, the oppressors. And so are their terror proxies in the region.
Fortunately for Doutaghi, she isn’t entirely wrong to call Iranians who reject her narrative “Zionists.” We are. Many Iranians stand with Israel and against the Islamic Republic’s terror proxies. Iranians chant “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life will only be sacrificed for Iran” at every opportunity.
When the regime puts Palestinian flags in public spaces to laud the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, regular working-class Iranians respond: “Shove the Palestinian flag up your ass!” When schools force children to step on Israeli flags and chant “Death to Israel! Death to America” (as I had to do growing up), Iranian children mock the authorities by chanting “Death to Palestine!” instead. These are Iranians doing this. We don’t want a fascist Shia state in our country or to participate in the jihadist adventures of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Rather than admit to her connections, Doutaghi asserts that her freedom of speech has been infringed upon, alleging that the article published by the Jewish Onliner was generated by artificial intelligence.
Perhaps her picture in front of the Samidoun flag at the “resistance movement” Masar Badil liberation conference in Ottawa is also AI-generated. Maybe her video at the Islamic Republic official Saeid Jalili’s online conference saying, “We should make those imposing sanctions regret,” is a deep fake. Maybe a Zionist mind-controlling android forced her to tweet: “From Iran to Palestine, glory to our martyrs” or praise Iranian analyst Ali Alizadeh’s interview with Hamas’s official speaker, Khaled Al-Ghadumi.
Still, I find it hard to believe that her years of uninterrupted support for the fascist regime in my country are simply the product of a computer algorithm, rather than the outcome of a terrorist ideology.
Doutaghi’s story serves as an eerie reminder of how closely tied Western academia is to Islamist oppression in the Middle East—to the extent that an Islamic Republic heiress can flourish for years in the field. I support Yale Law School’s decision to remove her. This, though, is just a first step.
When Yale hires advocates of the regime or when it stays silent when the Islamic Republic flag is proudly displayed on campus, the university legitimizes the fascist state in my country that has ruined the lives of millions of Iranians. We expect more from academic institutions that claim to laud human rights.
As Iranians celebrate our new year and the arrival of spring, I hope that Western academic institutions listen to Iranians who demand peace and freedom in the region, instead of empowering our oppressors and their advocates.