With the decision by the Trump administration to pull $400 million in funding from Columbia University, the writing is on the wall that support for designated terror groups will not be tolerated. Yale University may have gotten that message as it recently suspended Helyeh Doutaghi, the deputy director of a left-wing project after a news article connected her to Samidoun.
As an activist who had championed pro-Palestinian causes in both published papers and public appearances, Dr. Doutaghi seemed to fit into the left-leaning mission of the Law and Political Economy Project, which promoted itself as working for “economic, racial and gender equality.”
Last week, though, she was abruptly barred from Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., and placed on administrative leave. She was told not to advertise her affiliation with the university, where she had also served as an associate research scholar.
Yale officials cited the reason as allegations that she was tied to entities subject to U.S. sanctions. It was an apparent reference to Samidoun, a pro-Palestinian group placed on the U.S. sanctions list last year, after the Treasury Department designated it a “sham charity” raising money for a terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
I’ve written about Samidoun before. The group was co-founded by Charlotte Kates, another academic who is married to Khaled Barakat, a member of a designated terror group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Kates and Barakat hold webinars in which they praise and encourage support for Hamas and the PFLP.
In fact, they held one at Columbia University which I wrote about here. They were invited in by CUAD, the group that Mamoud Khalil helped lead. Here’s a sample in which Barakat praises the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, i.e. the 10/7 attack on Israel.
Since I released the full video of this event, I am skipping intros and getting to the meat and potatoes of this radical teach-in.
Khaled Barakat states, “It’s really important to see how the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation have liberated the Palestinian inner-strength outside. The new… pic.twitter.com/6nC1gUX3q0
— Stu (@thestustustudio) March 26, 2024
As mentioned above, the Treasury Department took action against Samidoun and Barakat last October.
Today, in a joint action with Canada, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, or “Samidoun,” a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. The PFLP, which was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of State in October 1997 and October 2001, respectively, uses Samidoun to maintain fundraising operations in both Europe and North America. Also designated today is Khaled Barakat, a member of the PFLP’s leadership. Together, Samidoun and Barakat play critical roles in external fundraising for the PFLP.
Getting back to Helyeh Doutaghi, an article was published last week connecting her to Samidoun through several events at which she was a speaker.
In April 2022, Helyeh participated in a webinar titled “Palestine and Iran – Changing the Global Balance of Power” alongside Khaled Barakat, a PFLP operative officially designated as a terrorist by multiple governments, including the US. The event was hosted by Masar Badil, another front for the PFLP…
More recently, Helyeh was scheduled to speak in October 2024 at an online event titled “The Resistance Front and the New Global Order-Making,” hosted by Samidoun and Masar Badil. The event also featured Barakat as a speaker.
The same article also notes her online support for Hezbollah leader Nasrallah. There is a wrinkle here which is that the article which broke these connections is on a site that uses AI to generate content. In other words, some portion of this may be AI generated, though the site has human editors who aren’t named.
For her part, Doutaghi has denied membership in any terror group but seemingly has not denied speaking at events with Barakat.
In an interview, Dr. Doutaghi, 30, called herself a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights. “I am a scholar,” she said, adding, “I am not a member of any organization that would constitute a violation of U.S. law.”
So far, Yale is not backing down, saying it investigated the claims and is not punishing her for free speech.
In a statement Tuesday, Yale Law School described the allegations against Dr. Doutaghi as reflecting “potential unlawful conduct.”
“We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” said the statement, issued by Alden Ferro, a spokesman for Yale Law. “Such an action is never initiated based on a person’s protected speech.”
Doutaghi is apparently also connected to The People’s Forum, which is the group that organized protests on behalf of Mamoud Khalil this week. She serves (or served) as a steering committee co-chair for something called the People’s Tribunal which is a project of the People’s Forum. Here’s a bit of a speech in which it’s quickly clear that she sees the US as the imperialist enemy of the rest of the world for imposing sanctions on places like Venezuela.
