Various academic and media organizations, along with political and cultural activists, have released a joint statement expressing their support for Helyeh Doutaghi, an Iranian scholar suspended by Yale Law School for condemning the Gaza genocide and supporting the Palestinian people.
The statement condemned Yale’s decision to terminate Dr. Doutaghi following a smear campaign by an Israeli AI-powered website article and the school’s retainment of an outside counsel with ties to Israel and military contractors.
Doutaghi, a prominent scholar and deputy director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project, was suspended and banned from the campus on March 28 after the Israeli outlet falsely labeled her a “terrorist.”
She denounced her suspension as an act of retaliation over her pro-Palestine stance and a violation of her constitutional rights to free speech and academic freedom.
The statement, in support of Doutaghi, noted that “such processes would legitimize the Zionist child-killing forces and undermine the principles of due process.”
“Her termination resulted directly from her academic work critiquing U.S. sanctions on Iran, her unwavering condemnation of the genocide in Gaza, and advocacy for Palestinian liberation,” it said.
The academic figures and activists also slammed the hypocrisy of Western claims to democracy, free speech, academic freedom, and the right to protest. “Academic repression and the systemic erasure of dissenting voices are tools to entrench hegemonic narratives and uphold imperialist educational structures,” they said.
The statement urged all justice-seeking people worldwide to resist “the Imperialist-Zionist suppression of free thought” and called for an end to the intimidation of academics and activists across the United States, Europe, and Canada.
“As Iran’s Leader emphasized in his Eid al-Fitr address, the Zionist regime in West Asia acts as a colonial proxy for Western powers, sustaining their machinery of violence and oppression,” it added.
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