Yale University Law School in New Haven, Conn. Photo: Juan Paulo Gutierrez/Flickr.

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.

Hadi Mahdeyan is an Iranian international student at Yale University, and a fellow at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA). Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.

The 92nd Street Y (now known as 92Y) on New York’s Upper East Side. Photo: Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia Commons.

A group of anti-Israel artists and writers has launched an initiative urging creatives to boycott the New York institution 92NY, formally known as the 92nd Street Y, because the historic nonprofit community center has hosted cultural and political figures who support Israel.

The collective, called 92NO, wrote on its website that the 92NY “stage and venue is tainted by [its] actions throughout the genocide.”

In a statement explaining the group’s formation, members said their frustration with the 92NY started in October 2023, when it canceled a scheduled talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet ُThanh Nguyen that was organized by 92NY’s Unterberg Poetry Center. The event was called off after the author signed an open letter that criticized Israel and called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an arms embargo on the Jewish state.

The same open letter accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and the “occupation of Palestine.” It condemned “the deliberate killing of civilians,” without denouncing by name the Hamas terrorist organization, which led a deadly assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which started the conflict in Gaza. The letter was published shortly after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The cancellation of Nguyen’s event resulted in several writers withdrawing their own scheduled appearances from the 92NY and resignations from staff members. The 92NY venue paused events as part of its literary series “given recent staff resignations.” Seth Pensky, CEO of the 92NY, defended the decision at the time in an interview with New York Magazine and refuted accusations of “censorship.”

Nguyen has previously expressed support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and in 2024, he joined over 1,000 prominent authors in vowing to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers.

In its statement, 92NO noted that after the Nguyen event was canceled, 92NY organized “a series of public events boosting cultural and political support for Israel” that featured figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, journalist Bari Weiss, former US special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, actress Debra Messing, and “various Israeli military, cultural, and academic figures.” The protest group accused 92NY of expressing a “clear bias and support for Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.”

“Throughout 2025 and into 2026, 92NY has continued to platform aggressively pro-Israel public figures,” the coalition stated, before listing featured speakers including journalist Bret Stephens, US Rep. Ritchie Torres, novelist Dara Horn, Israeli activist Hen Mazzig – whom the group labeled as an “Israeli propagandist” — Israeli journalists Ronen Bergman and Nadav Eyal, Bernard-Henri Lévy, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, former White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp.

The group specifically accused Sullivan of having “outright complicity in the Gaza genocide,” and claimed he is “one of the chief architects and cheerleaders for Israel’s assault on Gaza.” 92NY also called Karp a “tech world Zionist Bond villain” and criticized Horn for “repeated genocide and apartheid denial.” They claimed Torres is “funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza” because he supports the US providing military aid to the longtime ally and took issue with his “obsessive pro-Israel posting on social media.”

On the 92NY.org Policy Page, the center has a section titled “Regarding Israel.”

“We reaffirm that, as we curate our programming going forward, we will continue to welcome a broad range of viewpoints to our platform, including welcoming people who are critical of Israel, as long as they have not and do not actively call for the destruction of the State of Israel or question its legitimacy,” the policy states. The institution also notes on its website that it will “work to avoid giving platform to hate speech of any kind, including misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism, Islamophobia, and, of course, antisemitism.”