Jewish Former Student Sues New York School Over Protest Attack
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What happened
A campaign against University of Arkansas tenured political science professor Shirin Saeidi began on March 24, 2025, when Lawdan Bazargan of the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists filed a complaint with the chancellor accusing her of working on behalf of the Iranian government; the group later added accusations of plagiarism in her Cambridge doctoral dissertation and of antisemitism in social media posts critical of Israel, all of which Saeidi has denied. In April 2025 Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 721, which allows the state to cut public funds to any academic institution found to have allowed or failed to act against antisemitism. Saeidi was removed in December as director of the university's King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies and fired the following March, a decision upheld in May after an appeal, despite a unanimous faculty-committee recommendation of reinstatement, a university investigation finding she had not violated university rules, and a Title IX coordinator finding of no evidence of antisemitism; she has filed a 15-count federal lawsuit in Arkansas seeking to void the termination, recover back pay and damages, and overturn Act 721, naming the pressure group, university officials, GOP state Sen. Dan Sullivan, and commentator Ben Weinthal, whom she alleges colluded in a defamatory campaign—Bazargan denied defaming her or conspiring with Weinthal, Sullivan, or university officials, Weinthal said he stands by his reporting, and neither the university nor Sullivan commented. Separately, on the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and 251 abducted, Sophie Shabot, a Jewish American and Israeli former student at The New School's Parsons School of Design in New York, filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York alleging the university failed to protect her from antisemitic harassment. Her complaint describes being blocked, shoved, and spat on at the University Center in December 2023; a March 2024 Hillel-event takeover in which Jewish students were trapped for about 20 minutes and then pursued with slurs; being surrounded after speaking Hebrew in April 2024; a bottle thrown toward her head in fall 2024; vandalism of her workspace; little administrative response beyond two of more than 20 emailed officials suggesting therapy; and the then-president giving unauthorized encampment participants $300 for dinner and posing for a photograph that included a student accused of spitting on her.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 2 of 2
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Shirin Saeidi, Badria Mryyan, The Lawfare Project and Sophie Shabot
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 2 of 2
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: court filing
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- How it developed
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
The lawsuit over a University of Arkansas professor's firing is absent from right-leaning coverage. Left-leaning coverage says tenured professor Shirin Saeidi was dismissed after posts critical of Israel. It reports a faculty committee had recommended reinstatement, and that her suit seeks to overturn Act 721. Right-leaning coverage never names her or that law. A reader of only that side would not know a professor is claiming an antisemitism statute cost her the job.
Left-leaning coverage leads with a professor's firing over Israel-critical posts and a pressure campaign. Right-leaning coverage leads instead with a New School student who says protesters shoved and spat on her, a separate lawsuit that never mentions the Arkansas case.
Did the university's firing decision cite Act 721, or only political pressure about antisemitism?
Bottom line
Breitbart never reports the University of Arkansas firing, so its readers never see the claim that Act 721 was used to oust a tenured professor after a faculty committee recommended she stay.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Tenured University of Arkansas professor Shirin Saeidi was fired and filed a federal lawsuit seeking to void the termination and overturn Act 721.
- The university's Title IX coordinator found no evidence of antisemitism by Saeidi.
- Act 721 authorizes Arkansas to cut off public funds to academic institutions found to have allowed or failed to act against antisemitism.
- Saeidi's complaint lists 15 counts and seeks back pay and damages.
- The lawsuit alleges the university removed Saeidi as director of the Middle East studies center under pressure from Sen. Dan Sullivan.
- Lawdan Bazargan denied defaming Saeidi or conspiring with Ben Weinthal, Sen. Dan Sullivan, or university officials to have her terminated.
The Left View
The Intercept frames Saeidi's dismissal as the product of a 'relentless, ultimately successful campaign' by an Iranian exile group that 'colluded with university officials and a state lawmaker,' later shifting from Iran-related accusations to antisemitism claims in order to use Act 721. Attorney Badria Mryyan called the statute 'a really good example of a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection' and 'a deterrent of free speech and a deterrent of academic freedom,' arguing the university had 'a real fear response to any mention of Act 721, but particularly when it was coming from legislators.' The article presents the case as protected personal social-media speech—Texas A&M professor Leonard Bright said that after investigators found no university-rule violation, a presidential override was 'highly disturbing' and 'certainly going to chill other faculty members' willingness to address difficult topics'—and as part of 'a broader push to target Iranian and Iranian American academics' that 'dovetailed with the administration's focus on left-wing and pro-Palestine academics' after Donald Trump's return to the White House. Saeidi's lawyers describe 'a coordinated harassment campaign that was able to take advantage of a broader attack on academic freedom at the federal and state levels,' and Saeidi said she left Arkansas because she 'no longer feel[s] safe' and that people in public 'think I'm a terrorist.'
The Right View
Breitbart presents Shabot's suit as evidence that a university 'looked the other way' while a Jewish student faced 'appalling verbal and physical assault, exclusion, vandalism, and other forms of abuse simply because she is Jewish,' filed on the third anniversary of 'the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.' Lawfare Project founder Brooke Goldstein said 'the hatred unleashed on that day has fallen hardest on Jewish college students' and called The New School's conduct a 'shameful abdication of its responsibility to protect its Jewish students,' while attorney Ziporah Reich said the school had a legal duty to provide an environment free from discrimination but instead 'accommodated those targeting her.' The article emphasizes that no student was disciplined over the Hillel disruption, that the university offered Jewish students another entrance rather than removing people blocking them, and that 2023–24 Education Department CRDC data show Jewish students 'the most frequently targeted for religion-based bullying.' Shabot said she sued so the school would be 'forced to confront what went wrong' and so 'no other student has to endure what I did.'
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is that a tenured professor was removed and then fired over personal social-media criticism of Israel after the university's own processes—a rules investigation, a Title IX antisemitism review, and a unanimous faculty committee—found no violation, which her lawyers treat as evidence that Act 721 and legislative pressure functioned as 'a limitation on free speech disguised as equal protection.' The right's strongest argument is that a Jewish student was subjected to documented obstruction, spitting, slurs, vandalism, and a bottle thrown at her head while administrators accommodated protesters and suggested therapy rather than protection, a pattern the Education Department's 2023–24 CRDC finding that Jewish students are the most frequent targets of religion-based bullying is cited to corroborate. The central unresolved tension is whether campus antisemitism rules are being used to punish political speech about Israel and Gaza, or whether universities are failing to enforce existing civil-rights duties against harassment of Jewish students—a clash the two lawsuits embody from opposite directions, without either source engaging the other's facts.
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