Inside “Academia’s Iran Lobby”: The Shocking Rise of Pro-Tehran Professors on US Campuses

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Boston University professor Kaveh Afrasiabi for acting as an unregistered agent of the Iranian government. Prosecutors alleged he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to disseminate propaganda favorable to Tehran. At the time, intelligence analysts noted that such spending was almost redundant—given how many American academics seem willing to promote the Islamic Republic entirely for free.

In the years following that scandal, an increasingly vocal faction of pro-Tehran professors has emerged across elite American universities. Today, critics argue that calling this network “Academia’s Iran Lobby” is no longer hyperbolic, as recent geopolitical conflicts push campus radicalism into the national spotlight.