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.”
Ultimately, it was that mechanism of state authority — combined with pre
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