When Professors Defend Iran’s Regime

American universities have been shifting into a rhetoric that not only accepts “Death to America,” but is openly chanting the same slogans of the oppressive regime.

Anna Miller | March 26, 2026

Over the last few years, we have seen how American universities have been shifting into a rhetoric that not only accepts “Death to America,” but is openly chanting the same slogans of the oppressive regime.   Following the recent U.S.–Israel strikes targeting Iranian leadership, protests erupted across several campuses. Demonstrators set up a truck with a digital billboard displaying “Marg bar Amrika,” the Farsi phrase for “Death to America,” a slogan promoted by Iran’s regime for decades. What was once dismissed as fringe activism is now appearing alongside something far more troubling: professors and academic commentators publicly defending Iran’s regime or justifying its retaliation against the United States. Across multiple universities, faculty members and campus figures have used their tools of influence, such as their social media platforms to belittle the struggle of Iranians by portraying the regime as the victim. This blatant ignorance to the civilians of Iran is in addition to the regime history of violent hostility toward the United States. At Columbia University, Iranian studies professor Hamid Dabashi has published commentary accusing the United States and Israel of attempting to force Iran into “unconditional submission,” rhetoric that reads less like critical scholarship and more like a reproduction of Tehran’s propaganda line.   Similar narratives appear in the commentary of figures such as Professor Diana Buttu, affiliated with programs connected to the Harvard Kennedy School, who repeatedly frames Iran as the aggrieved........

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