Friday, March 21, 2025
Yale Law School has placed Iranian-American Helyeh Doutaghi on leave after reports surfaced linking her to the Samidoun Network, a pro-Palestine group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and Canada. Doutaghi, 30, an associate research scholar at Yale Law School, was placed on “immediate administrative leave” March 11, just one day after President Trump threatened to cut off federal funds for 60 universities, including Yale, that have been accused of failing to crack down on anti-Semitism on campus.
Yale did not link its action on Doutaghi to Trump’s threat. Doutaghi is widely recognized as Iranian, but the Iran Times could not find any birthplace listed for her nor any statement of her current citizenship. The Jewish Onliner first reported the allegations against her early in March, asserting that Doutaghi was a member of the international Samidoun network, or Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. The US Department of the Treasury identified Samidoun as a terrorist group and that is a fundraising front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The PFLP has long been recognized as a terrorist organization. The Canadian government listed Samidoun under its terrorist entities October 11, 2024. The US State Department says the PFLP receives funding from Iran. The group was very active decades ago but has seen limited activity in the 21st century. Doutaghi called herself a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights. “I am a scholar,” she said, adding, “I am not a member of any organization that would constitute a violation of US law.”
As a lawyer, Dutaghi presumably knows that it is not illegal to be a member of any organization, including the Nazi and Communist Parties, though such a party member would be fired from a US government job..
Yale’s very swift action on Doutaghi appeared to be a result of the fear gripping universities as a result of Trump’s threats to higher education funding. Just days before Yale suspended Doutaghi, Columbia University in New York City lost $400 million in federal funds for allegedly tolerating anti-Semitism. The Jewish Onliner linked an article from Samidoun that mentions Doutaghi as a speaker at a film screening in July 2022, held by the organization in Tehran. The article describes Doutaghi as a member of the international Samidoun Network. “We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” the Law School spokesperson said in New Haven, Connecticut.
Doutaghi wrote her doctoral dissertation in 2024 titled, “Wealth Drain and Value Transfer: A Study of the Mechanisms, Harms, and Beneficiaries of the Sanctions Regime on Iran.” In her summary, she said, “This dissertation offers a critical examination of the practices and techniques of economic sanctions as ‘slow and structural violence’ in and through international law. These coercive measures have been constructed and deployed by the global North to impose dedevelopment and facilitate wealth drain from the periphery to the imperial core.
At its heart, this study challenges the conventional and reductionist understanding of economic sanctions as ‘peaceful alternatives to war’, and their systematically deliberate violence as ‘unintended consequences’.” At Yale Law School, Doutaghi has worked as an associate research scholar and a deputy director of the Law and Political Economy Project since September 2023. The Law School spokesperson said Doutaghi’s “short-term” position would expire in April.
In other words, she is likely to be permanently parted from Yale long before any investigation can be completed. Before serving as an associate research scholar at Yale, Doutaghi taught topics including social justice and international human rights at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, from which she received her doctorate. After her suspension, Doutaghi wrote in a statement, “[Yale Law School] actions constitute a blatant act of retaliation against Palestinian solidarity….
I am being targeted for one reason alone: for speaking the truth about the genocide of the Palestinian people that Yale University is complicit in.” Doutaghi added that the action by Yale is “the last refuge of a crumbling order — an empire in decline, resorting to brute repression to stifle and crush those who expose its unraveling hegemony.” Doutaghi also expressed concerns about Yale’s choice of attorney for her interrogation, David Ring from the firm Wiggin and Dana, whose public profile indicates a focus on services related to Israel.
She questioned his neutrality in a case involving a pro-Palestinian academic. “This crackdown is a dangerous escalation in state repression, fostering an atmosphere of fear on campus,” said Doutaghi. “We are witnessing a new era of Zionist McCarthyism, where dissent is met with violence, and solidarity with Palestine is rendered a punishable offense.” Eric Lee, Doutaghi’s lawyer, wrote on social media in light of her suspension, “Yale is bending the knee to Trump’s effort to suppress free speech, crush academic freedom, and establish a dictatorship.”
Alden Ferro, a spokesman for Yale Law School, said suspensions are “never initiated based on a person’s protected speech.” And the letter to Doutaghi from Yale’s senior associate dean, Joseph M. Crosby, said her suspension involves “your activities with various entities that are subject to US sanctions.” Doutaghi’s suspension came three days after Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian and recent Columbia University graduate who helped lead last year’s solidarity protests in support of the Gaza Palestinians, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be deported despite having a green card.
Following the detention of Khalil, Trump declared it was “the first of many to come,” labeling Khalil a “radical foreign pro-Hamas student” and emphasizing that the Trump Administration would adopt a strict stance against any pro-Palestinian activities at US universities.
