On April 7, the Yale MacMillan Center hosted a panel titled, “The War on Iran: A Roundtable Discussion.” The speakers repeatedly made false claims about Iran’s modern history and politics. When these claims were challenged by Iranians in the audience, they were met with dismissal and mockery.
This panel epitomizes a larger problem with how Iran is discussed at Yale. Our academic culture has allowed perceived expertise to shield weak and morally suspect arguments, while the voices of Iranians are only tolerated if they reinforce an established narrative.
Laura Robson, Elihu Professor of Global Affairs and History, started by saying she was “not an Iran expert.” She then described Iran’s 1953 government change as the United States collaborating with the British government to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister, “Mustafa” Mossadegh, in favor of the return of an autocratic monarchy.
This is inaccurate, not only because Robson actually meant “Mohammad” Mossadegh, but also because he was never democratically elected. When confronted, the professor claimed that descriptions of anybody, even beyond Iran, as democratically elected need to come with asterisks, morally equivocating dictators with other democratically elected leaders. She continued by saying there’s no question that the regime that the US replaced him with [Pahlavi 1953-1979] was more repressive than the one that came before it.
While criticisms regarding treatment of political prisoners apply to both the Pahlavi and Mossadegh periods, Robson omitted the fact that under Pahlavi, women gained the right to vote, run for office, and divorce. The legal marriage age was raised from 13 to 18. The first public gay wedding in the Middle East was held in Tehran, and the couple was congratulated by the Empress.
Arash Azizi, a fellow at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, said that former Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif speaks on behalf of the Iranian people, when the mass protests that occurred earlier this year — in which tens of thousands of people were killed — show that the regime clearly lacks popular support. This is something universally acknowledged by even those who oppose the current war.
The controversial US Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, claimed that sanctions and war “have not done one iota” to weaken the Iranian regime or reduce its violence, and returned to the same conclusion he has defended for years: that blind faith in endless negotiation remains the only path forward regardless of past failures.
Contrary to this claim, the sanctions have significantly weakened the regime economically and constrained its terror proxies, and their conduct during this war shows how untrustworthy incessant negotiation attempts have been.
When an Iranian who had lost friends in the Ukrainian PS752 plane shot down and covered up by Zarif’s government asked the panel how they sleep at night knowing they support figures like Zarif, the panelists laughed and joked about using melatonin. The Iranian student’s emotional testimony was deemed uncivil by panel moderator Travis Zadeh, Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies, but the mockery that followed was treated as acceptable.
This is the problem with Iran discourse at Yale, and beyond Yale. Treating academic credentials as a pass to ignore views that don’t fit the pre-established political ideology of “experts” is not merely due to ignorance and disconnect from reality. It is a deliberate decision to launder these fundamental misunderstandings as facts in classrooms where future political leaders sit.
Iranian voices are already silenced through repression, Internet shutdowns, and executions. What little space that remains for Iran discussion is then hijacked by academics who avoid any resolution by framing everything about the region as “too complicated,” treat the region as a monolith, and present the regime’s terrorists as authentic Iranian voices.
Foreigners are told that any intervention is wrong, because Iranians must decide their own future. But when Iranians speak, they are silenced here and silenced in Iran by the very same policies that these foreign experts and discussion panels present as the best solution for Iran.
To make any progress towards peace, that choice must be reconsidered.
The Yale Daily News initially signaled interest in publishing this piece, but declined to move forward after heavy editorial pushback by at least one staff member.
This article was originally published in The Algemeiner.
