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An Iranian scholar at Yale said on Tuesday that she has been terminated by the institution after being barred from campus two weeks ago.

The move was prompted by allegations on a lesser-known, largely AI-powered news site called Jewish Onliner, which said that Helyeh Doutaghi had ties to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, better known as Samidoun. The group was sanctioned in the US and declared a terrorist group in Canada in October 2024.


Helyeh Doutaghi's lawyer told Middle East Eye at the time that Yale appeared to be retaliating because of Doutaghi's pro-Palestinian speech.

On Tuesday, in a statement posted to X, Doutaghi said she "will not legitimise a process driven by Zionist actors", referring to the pro-Israeli lawyer the university hired to question her.

Yale, she added, has not "presented a single shred of evidence demonstrating any unlawful connection or act on my part. I have been terminated based on unproven allegations".

"The legal technologies developed to manage and punish Global South actors who challenge Western oppression and domination are increasingly being redeployed inward, turning their gaze onto scholars, activists, organizations, and movements that critique the US or Israeli regimes," Doutaghi wrote.

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