Muslim scholar of international law barred from Yale University after AI-powered accusation

Middle East Eye

13-03-2025

In October 2023, the Law and Political Economy project at the prestigious Yale Law School (YLS), one of the most influential and respected academic and legal institutions in the country, brought on a young Iranian Muslim scholar of international law to become deputy director of the team.
Then last week, that deputy director, Helyeh Doutaghi, was barred from campus altogether.
The move was prompted by allegations on a lesser-known, largely AI-powered news site called Jewish Onliner, which said that 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.
'The initial email from the general counsel had specifically linked to the Jewish Onliner article and said that was the trigger of the investigation, so there's no dispute about that,' Eric Lee, Doutaghi's lawyer, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.
Doutaghi suggested Yale had barely carried out an investigation.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
'Rather than investigate the source of these allegations first, the nation's 'top law school' accepted them at face value, and shifted the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, treating me, prima facie, as guilty until proven otherwise,' she wrote in a statement posted to X.
The Jewish Onliner describes itself as an "online hub for insights, investigations, data, and exposes about issues impacting the Jewish community. Empowered by AI capabilities."
According to an investigation by the Israeli paper Haaretz, the site is linked to FactFinderAI, a programme not only prone to mistakes, but also linked to pro-Israel activists.
A vocal critic of Israeli policy, Doutaghi denied all the allegations against her, and called Yale's actions 'a blatant act of retaliation against Palestinian solidarity - a violation of my constitutional rights, free speech, academic freedom, and fundamental due process rights'.
"I am being targeted for one reason alone,' she added. 'For speaking the truth about the genocide of the Palestinian people that Yale University is complicit in.'
'Capitulating'
Despite large-scale student protests in 2024, the institution refused to divest from companies that produce the weapons that the US provides to Israel.
David Ring, the general counsel brought in by Yale to interview Doutaghi, has ties to the US State Department and US weapons manufacturers, and she did not feel he could conduct a 'fair' interview.
'It is reprehensible that YLS would appoint a counsel who profits from the machinery of Palestinian death to 'interview' an employee about their public anti-genocide and pro-Palestine positions,' she wrote on X.
Lee, Doutaghi's lawyer, told MEE that the interview never ended up taking place, because Ring would not permit a 'religious accommodation" for the day, given Doutaghi was fasting for Ramadan and had been enduring online harassment ever since the Jewish Onliner published its article.
'She'd been dealing with an immense amount of abuse, and was overwhelmed by the situation,' he said.
By the close of the business that day, 'I received the email notifying us from Yale's general counsel that she had been put on administrative leave and on the grounds that we had failed to cooperate with their investigation, which was ridiculous,' Lee said.
'It is completely capitulating to Trump's effort to establish a dictatorship and eviscerate academic freedom'
- Eric Lee, lawyer
Doutaghi is just one of many academics in the US targeted for their advocacy against Israel and its war on Gaza - a practice by Zionist groups that long preceded the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. But she may be the first to be immediately suspended after an obscure AI-run site makes claims that she has links to terrorists.
'I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages… the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield US military operations from accountability,' she wrote on X.
Her lawyer told MEE that the very project she was hired to help direct 'was ostensibly established to investigate the source of the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump'.
'It is completely capitulating to Trump's effort to establish a dictatorship and eviscerate academic freedom. It is perhaps not surprising. Nonetheless, it should shock people that not a single professor at Yale has stood up publicly to oppose what the university is doing.'
Lee said he is now requesting that Yale reinstate Doutaghi, give her back access to her email account, and also issue a public statement 'restoring her reputation, which has been damaged by their actions'.