UANI Renews Call For Oberlin College To Fire Mohammad Jafar Mahallati

(New York, N.Y.) – Today, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is renewing its call to Oberlin College in Ohio to terminate its employment of former Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, a tenured professor. Mahallati, who served as Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N. at the time of the regime’s infamous massacre of 5,000 political prisoners in 1988, stated on June 17 in an interview with Voice of America that he couldn’t know about the “little details” like the massacre. In June 2021, UANI called upon Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar to relieve Mahallati from his position on the faculty and disassociate Oberlin from Mahallati for his role in covering up gross human rights abuses.  

UANI CEO Ambassador Mark Wallace stated the following: “Oberlin College must terminate Mahallati’s professorship immediately. We condemn in the strongest terms Mahallati’s barbaric characterization of the 1988 massacre of 5,000 innocent prisoners by the Iranian regime as ‘little details’ and his false claim that the executed dissidents were ‘battlefield causalities.’ For Oberlin, the choice is clear: They can either cut ties with Mahallati, or they can continue associating themselves with agents of the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”  

Last month, Wallace authored an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post that condemned both Oberlin and Princeton University for maintaining ties with Iranian agents. Princeton currently employs former Iranian Ambassador to Germany, Seyed Hossein Mousavian; under his watch, Iranian regime agents carried out the assassinations of political refugees on German soil. Recently, Mousavian attended, and appeared in a documentary about, the funeral of Iranian Commander Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist responsible for the deaths and of hundreds of American service members. In the documentary, he gleefully remarked on several threats made by Iran to a former U.S. official’s family.   

In the op-ed, Wallace stated, “Leading universities like Princeton University and Oberlin College in Ohio have for too long chosen to cast their lot with the Iranian regime, not the United States and its democratic allies. Iranian government agents are members of the faculty at both institutions. Princeton must cut ties with Iranian Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Oberlin with Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. They represent the brutal Iranian establishment and hide behind calls for diplomacy and peace to mask their bloodstained records. It is shameful that both schools are standing by their side instead of prioritizing student safety and upholding their moral obligations to protect against infiltration by agents of hostile foreign powers.”  

UANI has also recently launched a petition calling Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber to immediately take action and terminate the employment of Mousavian. To join UANI in demanding Princeton remove Mousavian, please sign the petition here. 

To read UANI's letter to Oberlin College President Twillie Ambar concerning their employment of Mahallati, please click here.

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