Yale Law School has put Helyeh Doutaghi, an Associate Research Scholar, on "immediate administrative leave" shortly after learning about her alleged ties to a terrorist group. The Samidoun Network is designated as a terrorist group by the US, Canada, and Israel and has been banned by Germany and the Dutch parliament.

Doutaghi, an Iranian national, took part in a virtual meeting with Saeed Jalili, an Iranian regime official who serves as the “Supreme Leader’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council’s Secretariat,” according to media reports.

During that meeting, she expressed satisfaction over the West’s failure to deal with internal conflicts and lauded the international courts for achievements “for the benefit of Iran.”
Doutaghi also serves as an official at the Committee of Anti-Imperialists in Solidarity with Iran (CASI), an organization that strives to cancel Western sanctions against Iran, the reports said.
She was also listed as a “guest author” on the website of West Point Military Academy’s Lieber Institute, but her name was removed from an article she co-authored, and her author page was removed.
Doutaghi’s academic work, which she had conducted in academic programs in Canada and the US, revolved around criticism of US sanctions against Iran.

She was described by Samidoun, designated as a “sham charity” for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as a member of its international network. In 2022, she spoke online at an event led by Samidoun in Iran and its coordinator, Elham Abedini.

Helyeh Doutaghi (R) with Iranian official Saeed Jalili (L) (credit: screenshot)
Helyeh Doutaghi (R) with Iranian official Saeed Jalili (L) (credit: screenshot)
The event featured a screening of a film that lauded Georges Abdullah, a PFLP terrorist who was charged in France for the assassination of American and Israeli diplomats in the 1980s.
Doutaghi has expressed antisemitic views on several occasions. Last year in a podcast interview, for instance, she implied that “Zionists” control the government and higher education institutions in the US.
During an interview with an Italian outlet, she said the Mossad was behind a series of ISIS suicide bombings that took the lives of hundreds.
According to an article in “The Jewish Onliner,” Doutaghi appeared on Iranian regime-owned Press TV, an outlet that has been placed under US sanctions. She has lauded Hamas and Hezbollah and expressed support for terrorism on her X account. The account became private within a few days after the exposé.

'Zionists control the US government'

In an email to the Yale newspaper The Buckley Beacon, Alden Ferro, senior associate director of public affairs at Yale Law School, wrote: “These allegations are taken extremely seriously and we promptly initiated an investigation to determine the facts.”
Doutaghi’s “short-term position as an associate research scholar with the LPE Project ends next month,” a role she has held since September 2023, he wrote.
“For the remainder of her term, [Doutaghi] has been placed on immediate administrative leave while this investigation proceeds,” he added.
Ferro did not specify when the investigation would conclude, and the Beacon’s request for comment from Doutaghi went unanswered. Doutaghi’s bio page has been taken off the Yale website.
According to Dr. Ehud Rosen of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in addition to a sharp rise in Islamist sentiments among anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activists, far-left ideologies in the Arab sphere are also becoming increasingly influential in these circles.
Samidoun is considered a central “civilian” arm of the PFLP, which played an active role in the October massacre and in firing rockets from Gaza, sometimes in cooperation with Hamas and other groups there, he said.
The PFLP has close ties with Iran, and Samidoun agents in Western countries could serve Iranian interests, Rosen said.
Rabbi Shmully Hecht, co-founder of Shabtai, the Jewish Society at Yale, said: “The Yale Law School has been notoriously anti-Israel and anti-American for years by promoting terrorists under the guise of its centers for human rights. But human rights include Jewish rights – a basic principle that Ivy League academics fail to recognize as they sail on in their delusional bubble. These remain an outpost of anti-Western values at Yale, indoctrinating innocent students with false narratives on the sacred issue of our time, namely, the value of human life in a world of barbarism.”