February 2, 2024
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati who has reportedly called for the elimination of Israel and backed Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatva against Salman Rushdie was discreetly put on indefinite administrative leave by Oberlin in November after the college learned he had been accused of sexual harassment while working at another university. Mahallati was already on sabbatical leave from Oberlin for this semester.
An Iranian professor at Oberlin College in Ohio has been suspended, apparently for making a Palestinian woman give him sex in exchange for good grades and not for trying to cover up the 1988 mass executions of prisoners in Iran as charged for years by a group of Iranian-Americans.
Oberlin acknowledged that Mahallati had been suspended when it was queried about rumors to that effect. But it did not say why he had been suspended. The suspension, however, comes just after the college learned of Mahallati’s implication in the sex-for-grades deal and just after it learned that it is under investigation by the federal government for tolerating anti-Semitism by Mahallati.
The move by Oberlin to suspend Mahallati, 71, comes amid mounting fury at the failure of many colleges to grapple with the anti-Semitism that has erupted during the Israeli-Hamas clashes in Gaza. Oberlin said it learned in September that it was under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights within the US Education Department on allegations that it violated a law that protects students from harassment because of their religion.
Mahallati’s suspension also came just after court papers surfaced from the 1990s revealing that, when he was an adjunct professor at Columbia University, he had been accused of giving a graduate student 11 years his junior good grades in return for sex.
The papers, surfaced by The New York Post, showed that Columbia and Mahallati had both been sued by the woman, accusing him of working to damage her reputation and academic future after she reported his alleged sexual abuse to school authorities.
The woman, then 32 and a Palestinian Christian, met Mahallati, a 43-year-old married father of a young son, when she began to minor in Middle East Studies in September1995, she alleged in court papers.
She alleged that under the pretense of interviewing her as a potential research assistant, Mahallati invited the student to his home, “made repeated sexual advances” and promised good grades in exchange for sexual encounters, which allegedly took place at his office as well as his Manhattan apartment for 15 months.
When she sued, court records show he tried to claim diplomatic immunity with a December 1, 1997, letter from Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations appointing him “‘Special Advisor in Political Affairs’ with full diplomatic and political privileges.”
He had been Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations between 1987 and 1989 and Columbia submitted a letter from the State Department to prove he was not immune from being sued for what he was accused of doing after 1989. The woman’s case against Mahallati and Columbia was settled out of court in 1998 for an undisclosed amount.
Andrea Simakis, a spokeswoman for Oberlin, told The New York Post Mahallati was placed on leave November 28 and declined to comment further. But she said, “We take all allegations of sexual harassment and abuse extremely seriously. We would not hire a faculty member who we knew to have a history of sexual harassment of a student, colleague or staff member.”
At Oberlin, Mahallati became the subject of a federal probe this fall when the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights revealed that it was investigating a complaint that he taught students “support for Hamas and terrorism” as part of a larger probe into anti-Semitism on Oberlin’s campus.
Oberlin said in November that it “abhors anti-Semitism” and said of Mahallati: “Professor Mahallati has stated that he believes in the right of all people to exist in peace and endorses a two-state solution that would allow the people of Israel and Palestine to peacefully coexist.”
Separately, a group of Iranian anti-regime activists, the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA), some of whom have had family members targeted by the Islamic Republic, has long complained about Mahallati, accusing him of being part of a cover-up of the mass executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 when he was Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.
An investigation by Oberlin into that charge cleared Mahallati. The college posted a document on its website explaining what it found. That document, “Fact Sheet: Professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati,” has now been removed from the website.
AAIRIA claimed that its actions over the last three years was the reason for MahalIati’s suspension. It said in a statement December 6, “This action [the suspension] comes as a result of tireless advocacy and stark revelations about Mahallati’s involvement in covering up human rights abuses and his antisemitic rhetoric.”
AAIRIA said it had unearthed the court documents on the sex-for-grades case. However, The New York Post said it had received the documents from the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think-tank founded and directed by Daniel Pipes.
In addition to Columbia and Oberlin, Mahallati has also taught at Georgetown, Yale and Princeton. Mahallati has been at Oberlin since 2007.
