In the weeks following the outbreak of the war between the US-Israel alliance and Iran, professors and student groups around the country have painted the Iranian regime as a force of anti-colonial resistance rather than as one of the prime instigators of global terrorism and regional destabilization. When professors use their positions of influence in academia to advance propaganda for the Islamic Regime, students have a responsibility to evaluate what they hear on campus.
Hamid Dabashi, a tenured professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, said in January 2026 that the civil uprising in Iran was “illegitimate” because of American and Israeli support. Although he has criticized the regime, he stated during the June 2025 strikes on Iran that “I would rather see Iran struggling under the corrupt tyranny of the ruling Islamist regime than destroyed under the Israeli bombs.” In other words, Iranians shouldn’t be free when Israel is attacking their actual oppressors.
This past April, Associate Professor of Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Washington and former Director of the Middle East Center, Aria Fani, sent an email to students accusing Israel of committing acts of terrorism during the recent war and Zionism as “cancerous, a potentially fatal outgrowth in our planetary body.” If this isn’t a blatant attempt at indoctrinating students, I’m not sure what is.
Youseph Yazdi, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, downplayed the regime’s crackdown on the January 2026 protests, claiming ”they have batons, and they have tear gas launchers,” as if those were the only weapons used against the protestors when, in fact, lethal force was often used. Later, he also blamed the protesters’ methods as “an escalation of violence.”
Even when these “academics” acknowledge the oppressive nature of the regime, they still paint the regime’s resistance to Israel as the ends that justify all of the means. Professors like Dabashi continue to frame the Islamic Regime’s crimes as merely a ploy by Israel to distract from the Palestinians. The term “accusation in a mirror” comes to mind.
Whether or not these professors represent the majority of antizionist voices doesn’t really matter; the damage to foundational trust in their academic institutions is clear. It’s safe to assume that the powerless students who interact with the departments that house these “scholars” are being indoctrinated against Israel and likely their own country. Gone are the days when professors can be blindly trusted to teach undergrads how to come to their own conclusions.
This, of course, is not just an issue for Middle East studies programs. The Red/Green alliance is still going strong with many left-wing radicals and antizionist student groups who have not been shy in their support for the Iranian regime.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an anti-Israel group that tried to recruit students to armed struggle against Israel in 2024, posted “Marg bar Amrika” (“death to America”), Khamenei’s rally call. A protest at Yale featured the same slogan on protestors’ signs.
At another protest, a demonstrator supported “Iran’s right to defend itself” and “That resistance deserves the support and solidarity of people worldwide.”
After the death of Supreme Leader Khamenei, left-wing extremist groups active on college campuses, along with student activists, held a vigil for the Ayatollah, portraying him as a “martyr against Western imperialism” and proudly waving IRGC and Hezbollah flags. With no hint of irony at all, A speaker at the vigil said that Khamenei was “a man of social justice” and “a man of peace.”
Have they forgotten or ignored the fact that the Islamic Regime has spread its influence by sponsoring terror across the Middle East while actively committing crimes against humanity every chance they can? Why the selective outcry among the “anti-imperialist” crowd?
What’s even more ironic is that Iranian-Americans were more represented among the counterprotesters than among those fighting “colonialism.”
These antizionists will do nothing other than shout and refuse to listen to the main victims of the regime – the Iranians – because it would mean acknowledging that Israel and all the Zionists who support them are once again on the right side of history. Some antizionists even dismiss their protests as “Israeli plots” while Iranian protestors actively put themselves in harm’s way because of how deeply they believe in their cause.
Clearly, for both the antizionist Middle East scholars and Marxist radicals, the moral value of a national entity is not based on human rights or progressive policies, but their zero-sum positions in relation to Israel’s moral reputation. To them, it seems that whatever Israel does is automatically deemed evil, regardless of the suffering of innocents.
A useful test for a moral principle is to take it to its logical conclusion and see if it leads to something obviously morally wrong.
According to antizionists, any action is defensible if it is in opposition to Israel. Taken to its extreme, antizionists would be willing to justify and celebrate the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel. Their collective response to 10/7 proved this to be true. They also defend and advocate for violence against Jews worldwide.
If antizionism and support for the Islamic Regime lead to the justification of genocide and violence, then that is a good reason to abandon such positions. While professors should retain the right to free speech, universities have a moral obligation to ensure that they exercise their influence responsibly.
It is easy for ideas to go unchallenged when they are presented as both scholarly and morally unquestionable. But that is exactly when they need to be examined most closely. Professors should be training students to examine arguments rather than accept their personal views. Since these professors aren’t likely to change, it is every student’s obligation to prepare themselves.
That starts with simple habits: asking what evidence supports a claim, seeking out opposing perspectives, and being willing to challenge ideas, even when they are widely accepted or endorsed by professors. If students aren’t being encouraged to do this consistently, then something fundamental about the purpose of higher education is being lost.
This article was originally published in the Times of Israel Blogs.
