TEHRAN – The removal of Dr. Shirin Saeidi from her post as director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Arkansas should not be read as a narrow personnel matter or an incidental university policy dispute.

It is a revealing incident at the intersection of politics, academic autonomy, and the selective rhetoric of human rights advocacy. Saeidi, an Iranian-born political scientist whose public remarks praised the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and condemned Israel as a “terrorist” and genocidal regime, was stripped of her managerial role and barred from academic duties after university officials said they were reviewing her use of official letterhead. That formulation masks the substantive problem: an academic sanctioned largely because her views do not conform to a prevailing political orthodoxy in the United States.

Iran’s Judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir captured the deeper significance at a recent press conference. He framed Saeidi’s dismissal as a vivid example of Western double standards on human rights and women’s rights, lamenting that a country that proclaims itself the “cradle of freedom” is actively silencing voices that are “enlightening, human-centered and humanitarian” when those voices oppose powerful interests.

This is not the first time such incidents happen. In March, Yale University suspended Iranian scholar Helyeh Doutaghi, Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project, following a smear campaign by the AI-powered Israeli outlet Jewish Onliner.

Doutaghi, an Iranian-born international law expert and associate research scholar at Yale Law School, was placed on administrative leave within 24 hours of Jewish Onliner’s March 3 article accusing her of ties to Samidoun, a pro-Palestine group sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.

The Zionist outlet, exposed by Haaretz as an AI-driven bot network with ties to Israeli military entities, labeled Doutaghi a “terrorist” for her outspoken criticism of the Israeli regime’s war crimes in Gaza.  

Yale conducted no independent investigation, instead relying on AI-generated disinformation to justify interrogating Doutaghi under conditions she described as a “predetermined guilty verdict.”

Denied religious accommodations during Ramadan and access to campus, Doutaghi condemned the university’s actions as “retaliation against Palestinian solidarity” and a “blatant act of Zionist McCarthyism.”  

Viewed in the broader context of U.S. foreign policy, Saeidi and Doutaghi’s ouster episodes read as more examples of instrumentalized morality. Washington routinely proclaims support for the rights of Iranian women and holds up individual tragedies as evidence of Iran’s domestic repression. Yet that rhetoric is too often marshalled as a pretext for political pressure and regime-change narratives, rather than as the basis for principled, consistent advocacy for universal rights. When Iranian women, academics, or intellectuals express views that do not align with U.S. aims, they are delegitimized or punished rather than protected.

This hypocrisy is thrown into sharp relief by the willingness of Israeli and U.S. leaders to exploit claims about women’s oppression to justify policies that themselves cause massive civilian suffering. As noted in recent public discourse, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invoked the Islamic Republic’s record on women’s rights in efforts to delegitimize Iran — even as Israeli military actions, with U.S. support, have led to catastrophic civilian casualties in Gaza, including a disproportionate number of women and children. The irony is bitter and stark: the same actors who weaponize images of Iranian suffering to rally international support have overseen or facilitated military operations in which Iranian women were killed en masse in the course of a 12-day war in June, regardless of their political or religious inklings. The selective concern for women’s dignity advances political aims while obscuring accountability for violence conducted by Washington’s closest allies.

The implications for academic freedom across the United States are consequential. While universities once functioned as robust forums for contentious argument and intellectual pluralism, they are increasingly becoming sites where certain political positions—especially those that interrogate core elements of U.S. foreign policy or question Israel’s conduct—are routinely surveilled, investigated, and suppressed.

Cases such as Saeidi’s also underscore how the framing of human rights discourse can be co-opted to produce rhetorical cover while substantive commitments are neglected. The U.S. posture of “support for Iranian women” is meaningful if it includes principled defense of free expression for all Iranian voices — even those who criticize Western policy. But where that posture is deployed selectively, it becomes a tool: instrumentalized language that advances a foreign policy narrative while leaving real people, academics, activists, and ordinary citizens, exposed when they deviate from acceptable scripts.

For Iran and for defenders of intellectual autonomy everywhere, Dr. Saeidi’s dismissal is both a loss and a clarion call. It is a loss because a scholar who engaged critically on urgent matters of justice was removed from a position of academic stewardship. It is a call because it reveals the stakes of speaking truth to power when truth unsettles powerful allies. The global community that genuinely values human rights should judge institutions and states by how consistently they defend those rights — not by how well they harness rights rhetoric to serve their plans.