Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Antisemitism Law Helped Get a Professor Fired for Free Speech, Lawsuit Says

A hardline anti-Islamic Republic group went after a tenured professor for comments about Iran. When that didn’t work, they cited tweets about Israel and Gaza.

An Iranian exile group colluded with university officials and a state lawmaker in Arkansas in a relentless, ultimately successful campaign to get an Iranian American professor fired, according to a new lawsuit.

Shirin Saeidi, a tenured professor of political science at the University of Arkansas was removed from her post as the director of the school’s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies in December over social media posts critical of Israel — a move that a national free-speech group criticized in a letter to the university.

Despite a unanimous vote by a faculty committee recommending her reinstatement, Saeidi was fired from the university in March, a decision that was upheld in May after an appeal by the professor.

The firing came after a monthslong campaign by the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, an Iranian American group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The group lobbied the university with accusations that Saeidi was working on behalf of the Iranian government and allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University — both of which Saeidi has strenuously denied.

“When someone tries to take everything from you, and your identity, your scholarship, your entire labor of your adult life through framing you and lying to the media — it works,” Saeidi told The Intercept. “It makes people doubt you, and this is the big issue with defamation. So it’s been shocking to experience it, but I was not surprised.”

The 15-count suit seeks to void Saeidi’s termination and award her back pay and damages. It also aims to overturn Act 721, a law signed in April 2025 by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which allows the state to cut off public funds to any academic institution found to have allowed or failed to act against antisemitism.

“This law is a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection.”

“This law is a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection.”

Ultimately, it was that mechanism of state authority — combined with pressure on the university from a state senator — that appears to have driven Saeidi’s dismissal, according to Badria Mryyan, one of the attorneys representing her.

“This law is a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection,” Mryyan said. “Act 721 is a deterrent of free speech and a deterrent of academic freedom, and it’s clear to us that the university had a real fear response to any mention of Act 721, but particularly when it was coming from legislators.”

The drive to get Saeidi fired from her job came amid a broader push to target Iranian and Iranian American academics and journalists — one that for years has featured violent death threats and highly personal attacks on people arguing for diplomacy with the Iranian government.

Meet the First Tenured Professor to Be Fired for Pro-Palestine Speech

With President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, however, these attacks have gained more purchase as they dovetailed with the administration’s focus on left-wing and pro-Palestine academics and activists.

“This is a case of a person expressing their viewpoints on their own personal Twitter pages, and when an investigation was conducted to see if they violated university rules, the university employees said no,” said Leonard Bright, a professor of public service and administration at Texas A&M. “For the university president to come and override that, that’s highly disturbing, and it compromises the faculty member’s freedom to speak her mind about issues of public concern. And that reaction is certainly going to chill other faculty members’ willingness to address difficult topics.”

“I No Longer Feel Safe”

The campaign against Saeidi was spearheaded by Lawdan Bazargan, who is listed as the AAIRIA’s director in publicly filed documents,........

© The Intercept