Petitions calling for Iranian alleged pro-regime ‘apologist’ profs to be removed keep getting pulled down: watchdog

Anti-Iranian regime dissidents have been exposing regime-backed professors across the US, but recently the progressive Change.org platform has been deleting petitions they set up to call for them to face justice, they claim.

The Alliance Against the Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) said Change.org last week blocked a petition against Sina Azodi, whom it accuses of being a pro-regime professor at George Washington University, and who has been promoting a book he wrote on Iran’s nuclear program.

The group is calling on the university to conduct “an independent and transparent review” of Azodi’s work and recent comments.

“This is a man who stated in a BBC interview that the regime has the right to use coercive power to silence protestors and who has documented ties to NIAC, the de-facto lobby of the Islamic Republic in America, spreading regime-sourced propaganda on US soil,” said Ehsan Nouri of the University of Virginia in an X post last week, referring to lobbying group the National Iranian American Council. Azodi is scheduled to speak at the university on April 27.

Neither Azodi nor Change.org returned a request for comment.

Removing the petition against Azodi is the third time Change.org has taken down one of AAIRIA’s petitions, the group claims.

Earlier this year, the company that started in 2007 as a grassroots site for social activism removed a petition demanding the firing of Leila Khatami, a professor of mathematics at Union College in Schenectady and daughter of Iran’s former President Mohammad Khatami.

Lawdan Bazargan, a former political prisoner in Iran who runs AAIRIA in the US, said the petition for Khatami, who is still employed by the school, had collected more than 80,000 signatures when it was removed last month.

Change.org also took down a petition calling for an investigation into Zeinab Hajjarian, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who is daughter of Iranian intelligence officer Saeed Hajjarian.

“They never gave a reason for taking them down,” said Bazargan. “We think that the universities are likely putting pressure on Change.org.”

“The removal of these petitions raises serious concerns about free expression and civil society’s ability to organize around issues of public interest,” she continued.

Despite some being taken down, some of the AAIRA petitions have met with success, including one to oust an antisemitic professor at the University of Arkansas.

Bazargan credited her group’s petition with alerting the school to anti-Israel comments from tenured professor Shirin Saeidi, former director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the school.

That Change.org petition collected 4,516 signatures, and was addressed to the president of the University of Arkansas and its board of trustees.

Saeidi was suspended in December for her attacks on Israel and using university title letterhead to praise Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, then fired from the university earlier this month.

Another recent petition is addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing “a potential national security threat” linked to Shahin Farrokhnia, an employee at BlueHalo, a US defense contractor “engaged in classified projects for the Department of Defense.”

Khatami, Hajjarian, Farrokhnia and BlueHalo did not respond to a request for comment.

Farrokhnia is married to Negar Mortazavi, a Washington, DC-based journalist who is the host of “The Iran Podcast” and a former communications assistant at the NIAC, which some legislators have accused of lobbying for Iran.