Helyeh Doutaghi, who serves as the Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project at Yale, was suspended last month following accusations stemming from an Israeli AI-powered website article on her advocacy for Palestine and Iran, as well as her criticism of the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

In a statement posted on X on Tuesday, she said, “Neither YLS nor any Zionist report (or both!) has presented a single shred of evidence demonstrating any unlawful connection or act on my part.”

“I have been terminated based on unproven allegations,” she said, warning that her dismissal could set a “chilling precedent.”

According to Doutaghi, what is happening in the United States at institutions like Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard is the “normalization of fascistic governance.”

“The legal technologies developed to manage and punish Global South actors who challenge Western oppression and domination are increasingly being redeployed inward, turning their gaze onto scholars, activists, organizations, and movements that critique the U.S. or Israeli regimes,” the scholar noted. 

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly ordered American diplomats overseas to scrutinize the social media accounts of some applicants for student and other types of visas with the aim of barring those critical of the U.S. and Israel from entering the country.

Citing two unnamed American officials, The New York Times reported on Tuesday that in a cable sent to diplomatic missions on March 25, Rubio instructed consular officers to refer certain student and exchange visitor visa applicants to the “fraud prevention unit” for a “mandatory social media check.”

The move comes as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine activism, which includes deporting foreign students who have attended campus protests against the U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.