Yale Law scholar with alleged terrorism ties gets placed on leave
The scholar, Helyeh Doutaghi, was accused of being a part of Samidoun, a front for the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Doutaghi has also praised terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Yale Law School in Connecticut has recently placed one of its scholars on leave after the publication of a report exposing her alleged ties to terrorism.
The scholar is Helyeh Doutaghi, an Associate Research Scholar at the law school whose work “explores the intersections of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), encompassing Marxist and postcolonial critiques of law.”
Alden Ferro, Senior Associate Director of Public Affairs at the school, told The Buckley Beacon: “We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” and added that Doutaghi’s “short-term position as an associate research scholar with the LPE Project expires next month.”
A Yale Law School spokesperson confirmed to Campus Reform what was told to the Beacon.
He added: “Until then, [Doutaghi] has been placed on an immediate administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.”
Yale Law’s decision came after the Jewish Onliner wrote that Doutaghi is part of Samidoun, a group that the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control marked as a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization” in October.
The PFLP is a Foreign Terrorist Organization that targets Israelis.
Doutaghi took part in an April 2022 event on “Palestine and Iran” at which PFLP member Khaled Barakat also spoke, and participated in several other events related to Samidoun, the Jewish Onliner wrote.
The Onliner also reported that Doutaghi made several pro-terrorist groups, praising, for example, the late Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah who was eliminated in an Israeli airstrike in 2024.
This is not the first time that a university has attracted controversy related to terrorism.
A Rutgers University lecturer, Hamid Abdeljaber, was recently discovered to have spoken at a Feb. 19 webinar hosted by an individual allegedly involved with Hamas.
In January, Katherine Franke, a Columbia Law professor, stepped down from her position after a series of anti-Israel controversies, one of which involved her co-writing a letter that seemed to excuse the Oct. 7 terrorist massacre, stating: “One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”
[RELATED: Trump Dept. of Ed launches investigations of anti-Semitism at five universities]
In December, George Mason University student Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, an Egyptian immigrant, was arrested for planning a massacre of Jews in New York. Speaking unwittingly with an FBI informant whom he assumed was a sympathizer, he wrote: “Two options: lay havoc on them with an assault rifle or detonate a[n] [explosive] vest in the midst of them.”
Also at George Mason University, a student and former leader of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was discovered to have kept guns and pro-terrorist signs at her home.
At Columbia University, Professor Joseph Massad has repeatedly found himself at the center of controversies related to terrorism. The professor participated in an event in Istanbul, Turkey that also featured a Hamas terrorist, and he expressed joy and approval of the Oct. 7 massacre the day after it occurred.
