University of Arkansas trustees uphold Middle East studies professor’s firing over online posts

The University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees upheld the termination Wednesday of the tenured former director of UA Fayetteville’s Middle East studies center over social media posts and reposts that school attorneys said were violent and anti-semitic.

Shirin Saeidi was initially fired as director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies in December over the posts about Israel and Iran. The 10-member board voted to accept that recommendation. 

UA Fayetteville’s Faculty Committee on Appointment, Promotion and Tenure voted unanimously in February that Saeidi should be reinstated after she appealed. UA System President Jay Silveria opted to move forward with the termination.

During the trustees’ meeting Wednesday, Saeidi’s attorney JJ Thompson said there was no doubt that Saeidi’s social media posts were offensive. But the question the trustees had to answer was whether it amounted to conduct deserving of “the academic death penalty,” Thompson said — revoking Saeidi’s tenure and dismissing her. 

He said the repost was made in the context of rejecting “collective blame,” and that she had expressly opposed attacks on both Jewish and Islamic people.

“A post can have offensive content without being cause for termination. And a post may be capable of a harmful interpretation without proving discriminatory intent,” Thompson said. “If every offensive or badly-judged statement can be converted into career-ending discipline by isolating it from the context and assigning it the worst possible meaning, then tenue means very little.”

Bill Kincaid, who argued on behalf of the school and the UA system, said that while the social media posts were the catalyst, Saeidi had disregarded numerous attempts to counsel her for other behavior.

Kincaid said Saeidi’s reposts “encouraging the murder of Zionists” came after she made other social media posts describing Israel “as a terrorist and genocidal state” while calling for it to be “dismantled by international forces.”

“Dr. Saeidi admits she reposted this violent, anti-semitic material with no commentary or criticism signaling she opposed the message,” Kincaid said, adding later: “Her belated explanation doesn’t make sense, and even if it were true, it’s no excuse. Dr. Saeidi acknowledged the ‘dagger from Doha’ repost was offensive, can be interpreted as violent and was discriminatory.”

Saeidi’s posts came against a backdrop of a split in the U.S. over Israel’s response to the 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants who killed 1,200 Israelis and took around 250 more hostage. The resulting war has destroyed vast parts of Gaza while displacing 1.9 million Palestinians and leaving more than 70,000 Palestinians dead as of last fall.

Saeidi’s firing comes months after UA Fayetteville revoked its offer to Emily Suski to become the next law school dean, after conservatives including elected Republicans took issue with how she had signed an amicus brief submitted as part of a Supreme Court case involving gender affirming care for minors. 

A GOP lawmaker earlier this year proposed inserting language into UA Fayetteville’s budget to cut off funding for the Middle East Studies Center, but did not seek a vote on the measure.

Both Saeidi’s firing and the revocation of Suski’s employment offer have come under fire by advocacy groups, faculty and others as attacks on academic freedom and free speech.