UChicago prof, the brother of a convicted Iranian spy, says Iran has nothing to do with anti-Semitic campus protests

Doostdar’s defense of the protests, and efforts to deflect blame from Iran, raise fresh questions about Tehran’s influence on American campuses.

By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon

A University of Chicago professor whose brother is a convicted Iranian spy dismissed the notion that Tehran has boosted anti-Semitic protests on U.S. college campuses.

Next semester, that professor will teach students about “Zionist settler colonialism.”

Alireza Doostdar, an associate professor of Islamic studies and dual United States-Iranian citizen, is slated to teach a course later this year on “liberatory violence” with a focus on “Zionist settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid,” according to a copy of the class overview obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

His brother, Ahmadreza, was sentenced in 2020 to 38 months in prison for spying on Iranian dissidents as well as Jewish centers on behalf of the hardline regime.

Iran has also used campus protests to spread its tentacles in the United States, according to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who issued a rare public statement in July asserting that the Iranian government has encouraged and paid protesters in the United States.

For Doostdar, such accusations are “ridiculous.”

During a BBC News interview in May, Doostdar—a Faculty for Justice in Palestine member who supported unauthorized anti-Israel encampments on campus and was arrested during a “sit-in” protest in November—categorically denied that foreign entities such as Iran are supporting the protest movement in America.

He also said he has “never heard anti-Semitic chants” at the University of Chicago, where Jewish students have been targeted with graffiti reading, “Zionist freakshow off our campus” and “Zionist IDF terrorists off our campus.”

“This is a ridiculous claim,” Doostdar said after a BBC host asked the professor if he had seen “any signs of foreign interference or extremism” in the anti-Semitic protest movement.

He specifically targeted New York City mayor Eric Adams, a vocal critic of the protests who linked them to foreign influence efforts, saying the “NYPD has always had close ties to Israel and is still currently close.”

“This is an allegation made by authoritarian states, when they frequently label protests as foreign conspirators, like what we see in Iran,” Doostdar said.

“What I see here at our university, the protests are very inclusive and diverse.”

Just two months later, Haines revealed that “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza.”

Doostdar’s defense of the protests, and efforts to deflect blame from Iran, raise fresh questions about Tehran’s influence on American campuses.

Multiple former regime officials have held posts at schools like Oberlin College and Princeton University, where they have used their positions to run defense for Iran’s hardline government.

Doostdar’s remarks are also garnering attention among the school’s Jewish students, who are calling on university leaders to terminate the professor.

“It came as no surprise for me when I first heard that his brother was arrested for conspiracy, or when he claims that Iran is not funding these protests,” one University of Chicago student told the Free Beacon.

“What does surprise me is that the school has done nothing about it.”

“Iran has time and time again shown that, if they had it their way, the West would cease; so, no, a diverse perspective cannot be one of anti-Democracy, anti-West, anti-America, and pro-terror,” the student continued.

“We cannot have a professor like this at our institution.”

The University of Chicago did not respond to a request for comment.

The school never publicly addressed the case of Doostdar’s brother, even after federal law enforcement officials revealed that he used the University of Chicago Oriental Institute and Museum to conduct his spycraft in at least one case.

Doostdar, who also declined to address the charges leveled against his brother at the time, did not respond to a request for comment.

He conducted the May BBC interview in Farsi, and the Free Beacon commissioned a translation.

“I have never heard anti-Semitic chants at universities,” Doostdar said in the interview, which has not been reported in English.

“In the case of Columbia [University], it was said that some people had chanted some slogans outside of the university that were not students.”

“In the U.S.,” the professor continued, “anti-Semitism exists among the fascists, but I have not seen anti-Semitism in the student movements. The other issue is that some interpret certain chants to make them seem anti-Semitic, such as, ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free,’ whereas this is not the case.”

Doostdar’s comments conflict with numerous reports showing that Jewish students were harassed during protests on a range of college campuses, including Columbia, and subjected to anti-Semitic chants calling for Israel’s destruction by Hamas.

Later this year, Doostdar will teach a class centered on how “oppressed peoples’ struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against non-combatants.”

Students will study various “freedom movements,” including “Malcolm X and the Black Panthers’ mobilization against white supremacy and police violence.”

The Palestinian conflict with Israel will also be featured.

In past writings, Doostdar has accused Israel of killing innocent Palestinian journalists during the Jewish state’s war on Hamas.

Israel has identified a number of those reporters as Hamas operatives.

“Since October 7, Israel has turned Palestine into a graveyard for journalists—a horror that, as if this were thinkable, pales in magnitude to the much larger massacre of children (over a hundred per day),” the professor wrote in a piece titled, “Witnessing Genocide.”

“There is mounting evidence that the reason more Palestinian journalists have died in the past three months than in any other conflict in history is that Israel is deliberately killing them,” Doostdar wrote.

In a 2022 interview, meanwhile, Doostdar discussed growing up under Iran’s hardline government and attending university in Tehran.

“So I had people within my family who were Islamists, there were people who were Communists, there were people who were more liberal, and so on,” he said.

Doostdar’s brother, Ahmadreza, was convicted with another Iranian in 2020 for spying on Iranian dissidents in California and Chicago.

Ahmadreza also monitored a number of Jewish centers, including a Hillel Center and a Rohr Chabad Center.

“This case illustrates Iran’s targeting of Americans in the United States in order to silence those who oppose the Iranian regime or otherwise further its goals,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said at the time.

“The defendants, working for Iran, gathered information on Americans that could then be used by the Iranian intelligence services to intimidate or harm them or their families.”

Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank who assisted with the translation of Doostdar’s BBC interview, said that Iran’s strategy is to foment unrest in the United States, primarily through protest movements like the one that erupted in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 strike.

“The Islamic Republic’s strategy towards the West has consistently been to invoke chaos and exploit the momentum generated by civic movements,” Sayeh said.

“The regime adeptly leverages various progressive causes to further its influence operations in the U.S. In this context, Tehran’s Islamist regime propagates anti-Semitism both at home and abroad, cloaked under the guise of anti-Zionism.”

Alireza DoostdarIranUniversity of Chicago