The Zero-Sum Game of Gender Justice and National Liberation Anti-Gender Mobilization, Diasporic Harassment, and Academic Freedom after the 2026 Massacre of Iranians and the US-Israeli War on Iran

In January 2026, large-scale and nationwide protests broke out in Iran. The protests, which were violently suppressed by the state, killing thousands of people, revealed, once again, many people’s desire for foundational change in Iran’s ruling authority. Following the protests, on 28 February 2026, Israel and the US launched a military attack against Iran. The attacks, which were claimed to target key political/military leaders, killed many civilians, among them over one hundred children, in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab, on the very first day of the war. My attention in this short essay is on one specific worrying trend that resurged in the aftermath of these tragic events: the suppression of academic freedom by a segment of the Iranian diaspora, especially targeting those in opposition to a patriarchal and imperial imaginary of a future Iran. In this short essay, I discuss how gender justice and intersectional thinking in and outside of the academy are some of the first and main victims of such repressive forces.