A University of Arkansas (U of A) professor has been removed from one of her positions at the school. As Little Rock Public Radio reports, the removal follows a statement the professor made involving Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the nation of Israel.
Shirin Saeidi, Ph.D. is an associate professor of political science at U of A, who also served as director of King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies.
Screen shots produced by the dean of the University of Arkansas Fullbright College of Arts and Sciences, show Saeidi’s social media accounts included posts that called Israel a quote, “terrorist state that must be dismantled for the sake of humanity.”
Saeidi will stay on at the U of A as an associate professor of political science, but will no longer direct the center. A statement from Dean Brian Raines said his concerns, related to how these posts would be viewed, and how that quote, “impacts the Middle East Studies program, Fullbright College and the institution.” In light of this controversy, there is now an investigation into allegations of academic misconduct by Dr. Saeidi. That includes claims that Saeidi fabricated an interview with a prominent former political prisoner, Nasrin Parvaz. Parvaz now lives in London and denies ever meeting, speaking, or granting any interview to Saeidi, calling this a clear case of academic fraud.
The Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) has reported extensively on this aspect of Saeidi’s unfolding controversy, through the agency’s social media account X.com.
Fox News Digital and Iran International correspondent Benjamin Weinthal posted on his X.com social media account that the publisher of Dr. Saeidi’s Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University Press, is now investigating Parvaz’s claims of academic fraud, as well.
This case illustrates the growing concern about the issue of academic integrity in this country, and claims of research fraud. As reported by Kathryn Palmer, with the publication Inside Higher Ed on August 12, 2025, social scientists at Northwestern University, [just north of Chicago], released the results from their study. Those results, “uncovered evidence of widespread-and growing-research fraud in scientific publishing.”
Northwestern researchers, like Luis A. Nunes Amaral, Ph.D. an engineering professor at Northwestern, also discovered this fact came as no surprise to editors at some academic journals. Prof. Amaral and his fellow researchers estimate they were able to detect anywhere between 1 and 10 percent of fraudulent papers circulating in the literature. And as Palmer reports, the actual rate of fraud may be 10 to 100 times more.
Numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, have already reported on the findings from the Northwestern study. Those findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
