This piece was first published in The Phoenix‘s Winter 2026 print issue. Read the full issue at uchicagophoenix.com/magazine.

Foreign powers are making themselves at home in the ivory tower of American academia—not as intruders, but as welcomed guests. Benefiting from unparalleled “openness,” our visitors poach sensitive technology, bankroll institutes that police speech about Tiananmen Square, and routinely use universities as cover for their espionage. Is this what tolerance looks like? I certainly hope not. The American academy was built, in no small part, by foreign scholars and pupils, by men like Einstein and Fermi. This is different. Our “openness” is not the problem; it is the indiscriminate openness extended even to those who would slam the doors behind them on particular speech, freedoms, and individuals that calls for rethinking. In a brilliant move of intellectual jujitsu, our enemies have turned openness, our greatest strength, into our most easily exploited weakness. 

I regret to report that this includes America’s most renowned free speech school. In just a few years, UChicago has seen an Iranian spy arrested, a student-turned-terrorist blow up his dorm room, and an admitted student caught smuggling machine guns into the country. And now, adding insult to injury, a UChicago professor—the same man who sheltered that Iranian spy—can be seen on the BBC assuring us that foreign interference is nothing to worry about. 

The accusation of such interference in campus protest movements is “a ridiculous claim,” Professor Alireza Doostdar told the BBC, per the Free Beacon’s translation of the interview. Serious people, including university higher-ups, have been nodding along. But Doostdar’s tale begs all kinds of questions, and his actions tell a wildly different story. 

His placid denials fly in the face of recent warnings from U.S. intelligence and ignore the very visible rivers of foreign cash flowing into American universities. From dubious Qatari donations to Chinese Confucius Institutes, the fingerprints of foreign states are everywhere. Still, Doostdar insists he has not “seen any signs of foreign interference or extremism.” “If you can give me an example of this,” he challenged his BBC host, “I will be shocked.” 

Would Doostdar be “shocked” to learn that, in 2019, an Iranian man was convicted of spying on UChicago’s campus? Probably not—that man is Professor Doostdar’s brother, and was allegedly staying under Doostdar’s roof while conducting his mission on behalf of the mullahs in Tehran. Court filings reveal that two campus Jewish centers were staked out, dozens of anti-Iranian activists were stalked, and mysterious envelopes of cash were passed around. 

Professor Doostdar is not exactly spotless himself. He has had his own run-ins with law enforcement, and so has his son, who was suspended from UChicago. Although the professor insists foreign extremism has no place here, his class features bomb-making guides and interviews with Hamas leadership. Outside of the classroom, Doostdar praises Iranian missile strikes, performs apologetics for Tehran, and publishes on why ISIS is misunderstood.

Was his boldness incompetence or arrogance? I am not sure which is more alarming.

The case study is sitting right in front of us. According to federal prosecutors, in July 2017, after a long flight from the Iranian capital, Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar touched down in Chicago, where he would join his brother. Within days, Ahmadreza was conducting meetings in UChicago’s Oriental Institute Museum. On July 21st, he paid a visit to the University’s Hillel and Rohr Chabad Centers. It was Friday, but Ahmadreza was not there for Shabbat; he was observed circling the buildings, photographing entrances and exits, carefully noting the security, and making no effort to conceal any of this. 

Was his boldness incompetence or arrogance? I am not sure which is more alarming. It is embarrassing that sloppy foreign operatives like Ahmadreza can so easily spy on America’s premier institutions, and doubly embarrassing that they dare to do so with such brazenness. 

Ahmadreza’s next stop was Costa Mesa, California, where he began tailing members of Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group. His mission, according to the Department of Justice, was to build “target packages.” He and his partner followed activists into Persian restaurants, Sunday services, and pro-democracy rallies. Their list of targets stretched high, reportedly including several U.S. congressmen. Again, they were not subtle: they printed photos of their anti-Iranian adversaries at a local drugstore and referred to them as “motherfucking Jews.” 

Despite this, Doostdar denies Iran’s hand in campus protests and scolds our government for thinking otherwise: “This is an allegation made by authoritarian states, when they frequently label protests as foreign conspirators.”

In December, Ahmadreza Doostdar traveled from Iran to Chicago once more. Upon arriving, he informed Customs that he was paying his brother $6,000, supposedly for four days’ worth of expenses. Ahmadreza was ultimately arrested in August, amid yet another visit to Chicago. 

Although UChicago glossed over the incident, national media did not: Ahmadreza’s arrest came only weeks after Iran had fired ballistic missiles at American bases. Ironically, Doostdar has tweeted about the latter—Iranian missiles—calling them “the best and only hope for peace,” but could not muster any words for his brother’s espionage. 

Doostdar does not confine his views to tweets; he occasionally takes them to our Quad. He backed unauthorized encampments and was arrested during one, along with his son, Hassan. When Hassan refused to cooperate with University discipline following his arrest, he was suspended, which he responded to with an op-ed in which he boasted about “dying of laughter” at paintings of “‘important’ white UChicagoans.” 

From this encampment, Professor Doostdar told CBS he has no idea “why the notion of liberation” would be “threatening to anybody.” Yet, his course, Liberatory Violence, explores how “oppressed peoples’ struggles for liberation have often incorporated violent tactics, even against noncombatants.” If Doostdar’s “notion of liberation” does not already sound “threatening,” a copy of his course catalogue, acquired by a fellow student, should. Doostdar assigns “Anarchist Communism,” in which the author argues that the “privileged class can never be overturned peacefully,” as well as interviews with high-profile terrorists (“On the Record with Hamas”). 

Like any good teacher, he encourages a hands-on approach. Students are expected to read the likes of “Advice for Terrorists” and “The Science of Revolutionary Warfare.” The latter begins, “Today, the importance of explosives as an instrument for carrying out revolutions oriented to social justice is obvious,” and provides step-by-step instructions on crafting said explosives. 

America’s adversaries could scarcely ask for better intellectual cover. Regimes like Iran and Russia are itching to see America implode with political violence, and are counting on impressionable young Americans to be their cannon fodder. They are not hiding it: the Iranian Supreme Leader himself issued a letter hailing America’s most radical student activists. For years, Doostdar has been laundering calls to violence and the means to perform it through the language of real academic inquiry. 

These sympathies are on full display to anyone who might read his published works. In his “How Not to Understand ISIS,” he suggests that “a sense of compassion for suffering fellow humans or of altruistic duty” is actually what motivates ISIS recruits. Fortunately, in his recent scholarly project, “Gaming Islam,” Doostdar expresses hope for more charitable terrorist representation in video games. He praises games that flip the script: where “terrorists” and “America’s enemies” are the “good guys” and, in the case of Quest for Bush, get to shoot U.S. troops and bad guys with George W. Bush’s likeness. Are discussions about gunning down digital George Bushes really worth our tuition dollars? 

They certainly are for our adversaries. A year and a half ago, Aram Brunson—a sophomore at UChicago and part-time terrorist for a foreign nationalist group—converted his dorm room (two floors above mine) into a makeshift bomb lab, and promptly blew it up. UChicago never openly divulged what Aram was up to—only that he started a “fire.” In reality, he was uploading grainy videos on bombmaking and his planned assassination attempt. He could have used some tips from Doostdar’s class, though; as the prosecution noted, Brunson was confident, but comically unqualified. 

Foreign professors and students should come to our campuses to revel in the freedoms they offer, not to rail against them

Let me be clear, this is not a free speech issue. Free speech is about persuasion—it runs on discourse and intellect. What we are seeing instead, in numerous well-documented cases, is foreign governments threatening the families of international students who attended pro-democracy protests, attempting to deport scholars for criticizing their home regimes, and lobbying administrators to cancel human-rights speakers. This is not speech; it is coercion. It is intimidation.

And I see no reason why any university—or any country that wishes to remain prosperous, open, and free—should indulge the petulant grievances of failing and unfree regimes. An open campus that is unwilling to draw this line will not remain open for long. 

In this case, Doostdar’s persistent normalization of political violence could not be further from the ideals of free expression. Foreign professors and students should come to America and our campuses, as they have done for more than a century, to revel in the freedoms they offer, not to rail against them. I welcome all manner of difficult, uncomfortable, and controversial debates about foreign policy. I believe they are necessary for any serious university. But that requires argument, not apologia; persuasion, and certainly not intimidation. 

If this were merely about Iran, one might dismiss this concern as partisan or personal. But it is not. Israeli influence efforts are also thriving on American campuses—sometimes through donor and advocacy networks, and at other times through government-linked initiatives. The Guardian reports that Israel’s diaspora affairs ministry compiles weekly reports, informed by “tips from pro-Israel U.S. student groups,” with the explicit aim of “targeting U.S. college campuses.” It is also no secret that wealthy benefactors have threatened to withdraw funding, demanded resignations, and pushed universities to harden their stances on Israel-Palestine controversies. The clearest example came at the University of Washington, which returned a $5 million gift after the donor sought to limit the speech of an endowed chair. The University quickly—and correctly—diagnosed this as a threat to academic freedom. 

Frankly, I do not particularly care whether this manipulation comes from Tehran or Tel Aviv. Perhaps one is more sinister, but neither should be tolerated. Rather, what concerns me are the students caught in the middle of this—the best and brightest young Americans, navigating a campus increasingly shaped by foreign agendas. Iran, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China all have, in different ways, sought to propagandize, surveil, or influence them. Universities are not meant to be geopolitical battlegrounds. We should not hesitate to guarantee students what they are entitled to anywhere else in this country: freedom from foreign surveillance, the right to speak and dissent without intimidation, and an education unadulterated by professors hostile to their freedoms. 

There was a time when this was self-evident. It was on this very campus that Enrico Fermi, an Italian fleeing fascism, placed his genius in the service of American democracy to split the atom and defeat the Axis powers. The contrast could not be more stark. Today, we find a completely different kind of foreign “bomb intellectual” in Aram Brunson and Professor Doostdar. Remember, the atom was split here for freedom; let us ensure our campuses remain loyal to this, and not to those who would turn the next bomb against us.