Oberlin College to VOA: Jafar Mahalati on 'Indefinite Leave' Since December 7

Oberlin College confirmed to VOA the suspension of Mohammad Jafar Mahalati, former ambassador of the Islamic Republic to the United Nations. Following the news of Mahalati's 'indefinite leave' from teaching at Oberlin College in Ohio, VOA inquired whether he was being investigated for allegations of 'crimes against humanity' and whether this was considered in his suspension. Andrea Simakis, a spokesperson for Oberlin College, briefly confirmed in a written response to VOA: 'I can confirm that Professor Mahalati was placed on indefinite administrative leave on December 7.' The response did not mention the reason for his suspension. Previously, the New York Post reported that this former Islamic Republic official was suspended following allegations of sexual harassment against him, as well as his statements supporting Hamas and anti-Semitic remarks. Mahalati has been under federal investigation this fall when the Civil Rights Office of the Department of Education announced a broader investigation into 'anti-Semitism' at Oberlin College. This investigation included a complaint from a former student, now the director of a nonprofit organization aimed at ending anti-Semitism, alleging that Mahalati taught students to 'support Hamas and terrorism.' This former student submitted complaints about anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli incidents between 2014 and 2017 to the U.S. Department of Education, which also mentioned that Mahalati told his students in 2016 that Israel was 'a colonial country.' Meanwhile, several Iranian human rights activists have been campaigning for years, providing documents against Mahalati to the university and the media. They also raised the issue with the university that he made significant efforts to deny the occurrence of the massacre in the prisons of the Islamic Republic following the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988. Ladan Bazargan, a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Plaintiffs who has been pursuing this issue for years, told VOA that the sexual harassment case against Mahalati was settled out of court, but a series of allegations against him, which reached the college officials and the media through the efforts of their campaign members, prompted the university to take action, removing his name from their website and clearing his office. The New York Post noted that Mahalati's suspension came after court documents from the 1990s were released, showing that when he was an assistant professor at Columbia University, he was accused of promising good grades to a graduate student who was 11 years younger than him in exchange for sexual relations. It is unclear when Oberlin College became aware of the sexual harassment allegations against Mahalati. However, Ms. Bazargan told VOA that he has not been allowed to teach at the university for a year, and when the university barred him from teaching, they were not yet aware of the sexual harassment case against him. Amnesty International reported in February 2023 that Mohammad Jafar Mahalati, as the permanent representative of the Islamic Republic at the UN headquarters in New York in 1988, played an active role in attempting to undermine the credible reports of the then UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran and Amnesty International. According to this report, he dismissed reports related to mass executions in a meeting with the UN rapporteur in December 1988 and also called the UN resolution expressing concern about the executions of August and September 1988 'unjust.' Mahalati had previously denied these allegations in an interview with Masih Alinejad on VOA's 'Tablet' program.