University of Arkansas – Shirin Saeidi

Summary

In early December 2025, University of Arkansas political science professor Shirin Saeidi published posts on X, formerly Twitter, in which she praised Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following Iran’s military confrontation with Israel and described Israel as a terrorist and genocidal state. Around the same period, she circulated a letter on University of Arkansas letterhead calling for the release of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official convicted in Sweden for his role in the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners. The posts and letter quickly drew national and international attention and prompted complaints from outside advocacy groups as well as scrutiny from state lawmakers, who questioned whether her conduct violated university policies.

On December 11, 2025, the University of Arkansas announced that Saeidi had been removed from her position as director of the Middle East Studies program. University officials said the action was administrative and separate from her tenured faculty status, which remained unchanged, and stated that the matter was under internal review. Reporting indicated that the decision followed public pressure and inquiries into whether she had improperly used her administrative role and university resources for political advocacy. The university did not publicly release disciplinary findings beyond the demotion.

In mid-December 2025, reporting indicated that Saeidi’s academic publisher had opened an investigation into possible academic misconduct related to her dissertation and subsequent publications. The claims included allegations of unauthorized use of interview material and questions about the accuracy of cited sources. These developments intensified scrutiny of her professional conduct and expanded the controversy beyond her administrative role, highlighting both concerns over her academic integrity and the content of her public political statements.

By late December 2025, the dispute had expanded internationally. Iranian state media and officials, including Iran’s judiciary, condemned the University of Arkansas’s actions as a violation of rights and academic freedom. Iranian outlets described Saeidi’s demotion as politically motivated retaliation for her pro-Iran and pro-Palestinian views, emphasizing her status as an Iranian professor and framing the case as an example of perceived bias against Iran in Western institutions.