April 18, 2025

This statement was recently issued by over 30 groups.

On Friday, March 28, Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi, a prominent Iranian scholar and Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project at Yale Law School, was terminated from her position. Yale’s decision followed a smear campaign of fabrications by a Zionist AI outlet and Yale’s retention of an outside council with ties to Israel and military contractors.

In a public statement, Dr. Doutaghi rejected the accusations, asserting that engaging with such processes would legitimize the Zionist child-killing forces and would 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 her advocacy for Palestinian liberation.

Dr. Doutaghi’s removal occurs amid an unprecedented U.S. government crackdown targeting scholars, students and activists who oppose genocide and advocate for peace, both on campuses and in public spaces. Her Iranian identity has further compounded this repression, as the U.S. and its allies escalate warmongering policies and economic sanctions against Iran while silencing dissent.

The dismissal of an academic solely for expressing political views exposes 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. As Dr. Doutaghi has highlighted, we are witnessing a resurgence of Zionist-inflected McCarthyism in the U.S., aimed at stifling criticism of Israel.

This new wave of ideological purges, career blacklisting and performative condemnations mirrors the Cold War-era tactics of the 1950s, now repackaged under a 21st-century imperialist-Zionist agenda.

In this climate, resistance to the imperialist-Zionist suppression of free thought and dissent is not optional; it is a moral imperative for all justice-seeking people worldwide. As Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 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.

We, the undersigned, condemn Yale Law School’s decision to terminate Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi as part of a coordinated effort to systematically silence voices opposing genocide and U.S. imperialist policies. We demand the immediate retraction of all unsubstantiated charges against Dr. Doutaghi in the United States and a formal apology from Yale Law School and the LPE Project and compensation for damages inflicted on Dr. Doutaghi. Moreover, we call for an end to the intimidation of academics and activists in Western institutions across the U.S., Europe and Canada.

These attacks aim to terrorize and silence the countless advocates who have courageously amplified Palestinian resistance and the call for freedom. We urge academic, student and political movements worldwide who stood firm against imperialist-Zionist coercion to raise their voices about the genocide and defend the Palestinian right to resist.

Link to sign the statement: forms.gle/Y96Sp43oWa6j2MNR9