The National Lawyers Guild and its International Committee express our strongest solidarity with international law scholar, anti-imperialist academic, and Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale Law School, Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi. Dr. Doutaghi has been placed on leave and banned from campus after she was the subject of an attack article on an AI-driven far-right Zionist website. We call for her immediate reinstatement, and join Dr. Doutaghi’s call for immediate reparative action from Yale University and Yale Law School, including:

• Yale’s full disclosure and divestment from genocide in occupied Palestine
• Concrete and effective measures to rectify the harm it has inflicted upon Dr Doutaghi, including making a statement to publicly restore her reputation and to reverse the actions taken to this point by the Law School, and
• An immediate and effective boycott of Yale Law School, including refusing to participate in YLS events and activities, until YLS takes measures to rectify its harms against Dr. Doutaghi and the students and faculty as a whole.

The NLG has proudly worked with Dr. Doutaghi on multiple projects, including serving as a convening organization of the International People’s Tribunal on US Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, Coercive Economic Measures, which she co-chaired. Dr. Doutaghi’s work in Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions, is precisely the kind of scholarship essential to strengthening our movement and legal strategies. 

As an organization of lawyers, legal workers, jailhouse lawyers and law students, it is particularly urgent for us to confront this Red Scare-style repression and counterinsurgency — carried out by both the state and university administrations, especially within law schools. We urge legal academics, scholars, and legal institutions to loudly and unequivocally condemn the attack on Dr. Doutaghi, the repression of anti-imperialist scholars, and the targetting of the Palestine solidarity movement.  Those challenging genocide and complicity in genocide on our campuses must not stand alone. 

The campus ban and suspension of Dr. Doutaghi comes amid a wave of escalating repression:

• Columbia University has expelled, suspended, and revoked  the degrees of 22 students; 
• U.S. permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil and student visa holder Leqaa Kordia have been disappeared by ICE, and Dr. Rasha Alawieh has been deported;
• The Trump administration, continuing the Biden administration’s crackdown, has issued demands to major universities for even more severe repression; 
• The Department of Homeland Security is boasting in official press releases about doctoral students leaving the United States after participating in protests against genocide and for  Palestinian liberation. 

This is a moment where legal institutions and tenured academics cannot and must not be silent. 

Yale Law School’s actions are particularly egregious. It suspended Dr. Doutaghi and banned her from campus within 48 hours of the publication of an AI-generated far-right smear article (and 24 hours of learning of its publication), followed by tweets by notorious far-right Zionist influencers. It then hired an attorney to conduct an investigation who cites “Israel” among the “services” he provides for clients, with a history of representing the U.S. State Department and large military contractors, clearly indicating bias and bad faith on the part of YLS. This is not an independent inquiry; it is a calculated attack on academic freedom and Palestine solidarity.

We are deeply disappointed that the Law and Political Economy Project, of which Dr. Doutaghi served as Deputy Director, issued a statement that fails to explicitly condemn Yale University and Yale Law School. Their statement ignores the university’s central role in this repression,  fails to call for restitution for Dr. Doutaghi, and sidesteps the heart of the issue: the attack on Palestinian liberation and those who stand in solidarity with it. This is not sufficient to meet the challenge of the day. In the face of fascism and genocide, silence is complicity. 

What is needed now is to speak to the question at the center of this repression: the attack on Palestinian liberation and those who stand in solidarity with it  to speak to the question at the center of this repression: to express solidarity with the Palestinian people struggling to resist a genocide and liberate their people and land from an onslaught of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, all armed and funded by the U.S. government.

We reiterate our demand that universities commit to protecting their students, faculty, and staff from state repression, surveillance, and political retaliation. The U.S. government is criminalizing opposition to genocide, and universities like Yale are complicit–suspending, firing, and banning those who dare to challenge it. These heightened political attacks not only against students and faculty, but also targeting millions of migrant workers and other vulnerable communities point in the direction of a quick descent into fascism. Under international law, particularly the Genocide Convention, governments and institutions have a duty to prevent genocide–not to aid and abet or otherwise be complicit in it.

When universities fail in this responsibility, they must be held accountable. It is in this context that we urge a boycott of Yale Law School – refusing appointments, speaking engagements, and honors – until it fully rectifies the harm done to Dr. Doutaghi, to academic freedom, and to the Palestinian people. This boycott follows the precedents set by the censure of the University of Toronto for rescinding an appointment to Dr. Valentina Azarova for her support for Palestinian rights in 2021, and the boycott of the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign for illegally firing Steven Salaita for his advocacy for Palestine in 2014. 

Dr. Doutaghi’s own words make clear what is at stake: 

“It should cause profound concern to all defenders of free speech that those infamous words, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of…” are once again becoming a common refrain. We are entering an era of Zionist McCarthyism—a time when dissent is invariably met with crackdown, careers are destroyed for speaking the truth, and the mere act of standing in solidarity with Palestine liberation is treated as a crime. Just as McCarthyism sought to crush anti-imperialist resistance through fear and repression, this new iteration aims to silence, intimidate, and purge those who challenge Zionist settler-colonialism and U.S. imperialism. 

This is not a display of strength; it is the last refuge of a crumbling order—an empire in decline, resorting to brute repression to stifle and crush those who expose its unraveling hegemony…This is how fascism wins: not just through brute force, but through remaining reactive in the face of oppression, and through the complicity of those who claim to stand for justice yet choose to stay silent when fascism strikes….

I will not be intimidated. I will not retreat. I remain steadfast in my commitment to the liberation of our peoples from US imperialism, to justice, to truth, and to the unbreakable solidarity that binds us in the struggle for a Free Palestine.”