iranian exiles The group colluded with university officials and state lawmakers in Arkansas to launch a ruthless and ultimately successful campaign to have an Iranian-American professor fired, according to a new lawsuit.
Shirin Saeidi, a tenured professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, was ousted as director of the school’s King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies in December for making social media posts critical of Israel, a move criticized by a national free speech group in a letter to the university.
Although the faculty committee voted unanimously to recommend Saedi’s reinstatement, Saedi was fired from the school in March, a decision that was upheld in May after the professor appealed.
The firings come after a months-long campaign by the Defenders of the Islamic Regime, an Iranian-American group opposed to the Islamic Republic.
The group lobbied the university, accusing Saidi of working on behalf of the Iranian government and accusing her of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis at Cambridge University – both of which Saidi strenuously denied.
“When someone tries to take everything from you, including your identity, your scholarship, your entire labor of adult life, by framing you and lying to the press — that’s effective,” Saedi told The Intercept. “It makes people doubt you, which is a big problem with defamation. So it’s shocking to go through it, but I’m not surprised.”
The 15-count lawsuit seeks to invalidate Saeidi’s termination and award her back pay and damages. It also aims to overturn Act 721, a bill signed by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in April 2025 that allows the state to cut off public funding to any academic institution found to have allowed or failed to take action against anti-Semitism.
“This law is a perfect example of limiting free speech under the guise of equal protection.”
Badria Mryyan, one of the lawyers representing Saedi, said that ultimately it was the machinery of state authority, combined with pressure from state senators on the university, that led to Saedi’s firing.
“This law is a great example of limiting free speech under the guise of equal protection,” Muryan said. “Section 721 is a deterrent to free speech and academic freedom, and it is clear to us that universities react with real fear to any mention of Section 721, especially when it comes from legislators.”
Saeedi’s firing comes against the backdrop of a broader campaign against Iran and Iranian-American academics and journalists — one that has been characterized for years by violent death threats and a high level of physical attacks against those who advocate diplomacy with the Iranian government.
However, with President Donald Trump back in the White House, these attacks have gained more support because they dovetail with the administration’s focus on left-wing and pro-Palestinian academics and activists.
“This is a case of someone expressing their views on their own personal Twitter page, and when investigated to see if they violated university rules, university employees said no,” said Leonard Bright, a professor of public service and administration at Texas A&M University. “For a university president to overturn that is very troubling, and it undermines the ability of faculty to speak out on issues of public concern.”
‘I no longer feel safe’
The lawsuit alleges that the campaign against Saeidi was led by Lawdan Bazargan, who is listed in public filings as AAIRIA’s director.
The group, which describes itself as “a group of former Iranian political prisoners, family members of executed political prisoners, and human rights activists committed to (seeking) justice and accountability,” has launched a series of similar campaigns against Iran and Iranian-American academics and journalists, accusing them of supporting the Iranian government.
In a statement to The Intercept, Bazargan denied claims that she conspired with others to terminate Saedi.
“I categorically deny the allegation that I defamed Dr. Shireen Saidi or participated in any secret conspiracy or colluded with Benjamin Wintar, Senator Dan Sullivan or University of Arkansas officials to fire her,” Bazargan wrote. “The suggestion that there was some coordinated conspiracy among us is simply false. We raised our concerns publicly and demanded a full review of their decisions by institutions, elected officials, and journalists.”
Sadie, who was sacked and forced to defend herself against allegations of serious misconduct, says the campaign against her changed her life forever.
“It not only hurt my career, it hurt my life,” she said. “I had to leave Arkansas because I no longer felt safe. People who went to my kids’ school, people I saw in the grocery store, people who saw me at the gym – they thought I was a terrorist.”
“People who go to my kids’ school, people I see in the grocery store, people who see me at the gym — they think I’m a terrorist.”
Now, Saeidi is fighting back against the lawsuit. In an 88-page complaint filed late Monday in Arkansas federal court, Saidi and her attorneys accuse Iranian-American pressure groups, university officials, Republican state Sen. Dan Sullivan and Jerusalem-based pro-Israel expert Ben Wintar of conspiring to defamatoryly violate her free speech rights, motivated by Islamophobia and a desire to eliminate pro-Palestinian speech.
“Dr. Shirin Saeidi has been the subject of a coordinated campaign of harassment due to her work in her field and her advocacy and protected speech that capitalizes on a broader attack on academic freedom at the federal and state levels,” said Connor Thompson, one of the attorneys representing Saeidi. “We want to uphold the rights of our client, whose life has literally been ruined.”
Neither a spokesman for the University of Arkansas nor state Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is named in the lawsuit, responded to requests for comment.
numerous accusations
Bazargan began filing a formal complaint against Saeidi on March 24, 2025, with the president of the University of Arkansas. The next day, Bazargan appeared on an Israeli news program and accused Saidi and other American professors of supporting the Iranian government.
The group’s accusations against Saedi initially focused on the professor’s testimony at the Swedish trial of an Iranian official accused of involvement in the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners. Bazargan’s brother was killed in a mass execution, she said.
Over the next few months, Bazargan wrote multiple letters to university officials, many of which were posted online, accusing Saidi of expressing “public admiration for Iran’s supreme leader” and being “ideologically aligned with Hezbollah” – a federally designated terrorist organization.
As the months passed, Bazargan expanded the accusations, accusing Saidi of plagiarism and other academic crimes while writing a doctoral thesis at Cambridge that was later published as a book on the situation of women in the Islamic Republic.
In an interview with The Intercept, Saidi said she was particularly unhappy with accusations that she downplayed human rights abuses by the Iranian government or that she committed plagiarism or other academic misconduct in her research.
“In my book, I actually documented human rights violations between 1980 and ’88,” Saeidi said. “I interviewed men and women who were in prison at the time and listened to their stories. I absolutely do not deny that human rights violations occurred between 1980 and ’88 and people suffered unfairly as a result.”
In the lawsuit, Saidi accuses Bazargan of working with pro-Israel pundit Ben Wintar, who works with Fox News, the New York Post and the Saudi-funded Iran News Channel. Her lawsuit states that during the campaign against Sadie, “the two agreed that he would press the university to investigate and release the allegations.”
Wintal, a former Jerusalem Post writer, was a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, one of Washington’s most hawkish pro-Israel think tanks, and is currently a fellow at the Middle East Forum, which publishes a list of “professors to avoid” and tracks thousands of American Muslims in a secret database who have been accused of Islamophobia.
The lawsuit states that Weinthal communicated directly with Bazargan on May 9, 2025, and the two “agreed that he would urge the university to investigate and release the allegations.”
That same day, he contacted the university with a Fox News inquiry about the allegations against Saedi, and again pressed the university president and communications office on the matter on May 21.
Wintar did not publish an article about Saedi until nearly seven months later, when he co-authored a Dec. 13 New York Post story about Saedi’s ouster as director of the Center for Middle East Studies. Although he appears to have never published an article about Sadie at Fox News, he has written or co-authored at least five additional articles about her for Iran International and the New York Post since December.
“I stand by the investigative reporting on Ms. Saidi,” Wintar said in response to The Intercept’s request for comment on the allegations in the lawsuit.
transfer target
In late 2025, as Bazargan and her allies continued to lobby university officials and trustees, the focus shifted from accusations of support for Iran to accusations of anti-Semitism stemming from Saidi’s alleged social media posts about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The strategy is calculated: Earlier this year, Arkansas passed a law targeting alleged anti-Semitic speech at public universities. Although the university’s own Title IX coordinator found no evidence of Sadie’s anti-Semitism, she believed it was a line of attack that ultimately doomed her.
Under pressure from Republican state Sen. Sullivan, the university fired Saedi as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and fired her outright in March, a decision that was upheld in May, the lawsuit said.
For her part, Saedi is fighting not just for herself, but for academics around the world who may be censored for speaking out on controversial issues.
“I don’t think what was done to me is undoable,” she said, “but I hope the consequences of this lawsuit don’t happen to other academics.”
Bazargan, for her part, is not letting up. In the months after Saedi was terminated, she tweeted about Saedi dozens of times, calling her a “fake doctor lady” and repeatedly accusing her of plagiarism and supporting the Iranian government. As things got heated, Saedi posted a number of videos online containing harsh insults for Bazargan.
According to an intercepted email, Bazargan reported Saedi’s online satire to the FBI.