The Greatest Harvard Story Ever Told: Kaveh Afrasiabi Versus Harvard

Timothy Bowen

“The cannons of Harvard are lined up against a pee shooter. I admire Dr.
Afrasiabi. He's an honorable man. He's innocent enough to think that he can prevail over
the resources of Harvard.”
Mike Wallace

There is a popular saying the academia that everyone has a Harvard story. So
does the political scientist Kaveh Afrasiabi, but unlike any other. It is the story of an
epic battle full of dramatic court scenes, described by some as a modern David and
Goliath battle and the kind of stuff that legends are made. It is also a story of injustice
and human rights abuse at Harvard, and of an individual's long and tedious quest for
justice against all odds. It is, as Afrasiabi has aptly put it, a Kafkaesque story through
and through, about how Harvard's absolutism crushes dissent with impunity, like a
ruthless leviathan, denude of its liberal facade. It is a sad story but also an inspiring one,
about courage under fire.
On January 16, 1996, exactly twenty five years ago, Afrasiabi, a former post-
doctoral researcher at Harvard's Center for the Middle East Studies, was arrested at his
home in Newton, a suburb of Boston, at around 6 AM by scores of police officers from
Harvard, accusing him of extorting money and making death threats. Those were
serious charges that carried a maximum sentence of 15 to 20 years. A few hours later,
the arresting officers held a press conference at their headquarter, informing the media
that Afrasiabi's arrest was the culmination of several months of intense investigation,
that Afrasiabi had made “serious threat to kill,” and that it took so long to nab him
because he had several addresses and numerous aliases. Then they transported Afrasiabi
to a Cambridge court and made the same presentation to a judge, who ordered Afrasiabi
held without a bail on the account of his “dangerousness.” The next morning, Boston
Globe in the 'brief news' section reported: Iranian professor charged with extortion. It
went on to say that Afrasiabi had extorted 500 (five hundred) dollars from a girl at
Harvard and had threatened to kill her if she said anything to anyone. A similar report
appeared in Harvard Crimson and neither paper bothered to mention that Afrasiabi was a
former research scholar at Harvard. It just happened that the charges against Afrasiabi
stemmed from two subordinates of a professor, Roy Mottahedeh, who was threatened by
Afrasiabi's complaint against him to a professional association. Immediately before his
arrest, Afrasiabi through his attorney, Kevin Molloy, had communicated to Mottahedeh
that if he did not stop vilifying him in the academic, he would have no alternative but to
file a law suit. Subsequently, Mike Wallace would testify that Mottahedeh had indeed
misinformed him about Afrasiabi and only later he had discovered Mottahedeh's lies.
(see video link below). After nearly two weeks in jail, Afrasiabi, helped by Wallace and
others, appeared in court and the whole conspiracy against him unraveled and the phony
charges were dropped. “Basically Mottahedeh used his subordinates as patsy to
collaborate with a Harvard detective to put me in jail and silence me, when I was
working with Wallace on a program on the condemned author Salman Rushdie,”
Afrasiabi recounts, adding that in any minimally fair society, Mottahedeh would be
instantly fired for his outrageous conduct against him, exposed by Wallace, a cultural
icon of America.
Exactly three years later, Harvard police and the other Afrasiabi accusers stood trial in
the federal court in Boston, accused of masterminding a conspiracy to incriminate and
silence Afrasiabi. For ten consecutive days, Afrasiabi fought valiantly against four
lawyers representing the Harvard defendants, representing himself because his attorney,
Margaret Burnham, had walked out on him on the eve of the trial despite a signed
contract. Afrasiabi had pleaded with the judge, Michael Harrington, to either force
Burnham to represent him or postpone the trial until he could hire another attorney and
the judge had declined by saying, “it's now or never, the choice is yours.” Subsequently,
it would turn up that attorney Burnham had been a personal friend of Harvard's general
counsel at the time, Margaret Marshal, who went on to become the chief justice of the
state's supreme court. At her nomination hearing, Afrasiabi testified against Marshal and
criticized her for ignoring a subpoena to testify at the federal trial. Marshal's defense
that the judge had granted her motion to quash the subpoena was a big lie and Afrasiabi
was quoted in the Boston media the next day stating that Marshal had lied at her own
nomination hearing and she had violated the law by ignoring a duly served subpoena
since the judge had never ruled on it. By then, the Harvard trial was over and Afrasiabi
was in the process of appealing the negative jury verdict that had let the defendants off
the hook, citing the following reasons:

(a) the judge had in fact closed the case five several months before the trial by proposing
a settlement (consisting of monetary reward to Afrasiabi and a two-year stipend
fellowship), agreed by both sides. In the presence of a dozen witnesses in court, judge
Harrington had shaken Afrasiabi's hand and wished him good luck. Yet, two weeks
later, Harvard had a change of mind and pressured the judge to reopen the case.
According to Afrasiabi, Harvard's turnabout was probably due to the fact that Marshal
was being nominated for the high court and they were concerned that a settlement would
sting her reputation. Several witnesses, including professors John Ambacher, Rene Le
Blanc, Mark Seiden, and others, have provided written confirmation that they observed
Harvard lawyers agree to the judge's proposed settlement and how the judge declared the
case closed. Harrington's willingness to comply with Harvard's demand was an abuse
of process and a big sign that he would not let a first generation Iranian-American defeat
Harvard and its elite legal team.
(b) the judge had erred by not forcing attorney Burnham to represent Afrasiabi at trial in
light of the signed contract, or to deny his request for a brief delay so he could procure
another attorney.
(c) the judge had erred by not issuing a direct verdict against a key defendant, Shobhana
Rana, a patsy who had been used to cry foul against Afrasiabi and had failed to appear in
court and testify as a witness as required by law.
(d) the judge had erred by first allowing and then excluding the handwriting evidence
and testimony of two experts who had matched the handwriting of a Harvard detective
on trial with that of the purported extortionist. The official court transcript shows that
initially judge Harrington had stated that the experts' finding was “so critical that it can
blow the case apart.” Yet, the next morning, with the jurors in the next room, Harrington
informs Afrasiabi that he had changed his mind and would not allow the jurors to hear
about the handwriting evidence. “A judge can change his mind,” he had told Afrasiabi
who was stunned by the judge's self-reversal.
(e) the case's initial judge, Joseph Tauro, had excused himself from the case a year
before precisely one hour after the deadline he had given Harvard to produce the records
of Rana's attendance at Harvard. Yet, instead of issuing a verdict in Afrasiabi's favor as
he had threatened, judge Tauro had taken the easy way out by disqualifying himself from
the case after Harvard had failed to meet the deadline. Afrasiabi's point: irrespective, a
verdict should have been issued once Harvard had failed to meet the judge's ultimatum.
I hasten to add that until a month prior to the trial in January 1999, Afrasiabi had
represented himself, in two law suits., a civil rights case in the federal court and a
defamation case in Cambridge Superior Court, filing hundreds of briefs and appearing in
dozens of hearings. His defamation case was thrown out on the day set for jury trial
and the judge, Hillar Zobel, a Harvard alumni who sat at three separate committees at
Harvard, did not have the heart to put the university on trial and he chose to trash the
rules of procedure by closing the case after giving Afrasiabi in-court instructions on jury
selection. Afrasiabi then complained against Zobel to the Commission on Judicial
Conduct and wrote a report about it that appeared on page 5 of the New York Times.
The reades should try to imagine Afrasiabi's ordeal of pre-dawn arrest and
incarceration, defamation in local and national media for a crime that he did not commit
and, it turns out, there was no crime and had been concocted in order to smear him and
finish him in the academia, the hardship of losing his teaching job, marriage, and being
forced to enroll as a theology student where he could live in a small dorm and
simultaneously learn both law and theology, by dividing his time between the Boston
College law library nearby and the library at Andover-Newton Theological School.
Another absolutely remarkable aspect of Afrasiabi's story is that after being
exonerated of the phony charges, thanks in no small part to the efforts of his celebrity
friends – Mike Wallace of CBS, historian Howard Zinn, and filmmaker David Mamet –
who testified on his behalf, he had been banned from Harvard campus, i.e., their
perverse version of apology for so grossly mistreating a former scholar who was a
published author. In fact, the no-trespass order threatened Afrasiabi with arrest if he
stepped foot on any Harvard property, and since Harvard practically owns half of the
city of Cambridge, that meant that Afrasiabi risked being arrested by simply going to a
bookstore or cafe on Harvard property. Undeterred, Afrasiabi decided to enter virtually,
intellectually, by getting published by Harvard University Press and various Harvard
scholarly journals such as Harvard Theological Review and Harvard International
Review, not to mention a half dozen articles on the website of Harvard Kennedy School
of Government's Belfer Center for International Affairs, or a half dozen of Afrasiabi's
books at Harvard libraries, some used in classrooms. Here was a man who was widely
published by Harvard, which professors used his books in their classes, who had been
fully exonerated of any blame in his wrongful arrest by Harvard police, and yet he could
not even go to any of the dozens of cafes, restaurants, bookstores, and so on, in
Cambridge without risking arrest.
In retrospect, however, it appears that Afrasiabi was catapulted to a higher level as
a result of the Harvard challenges that, sadly, went beyond Harvard as he was blacklisted
in the academia and lost a fellowship at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.,
simply because he was vilified by Harvard's cronies. The latter also lobbied one of his
publishers to call his book out of print, and blocked Afrasiabi's complaint to the ethics
committee of Middle East Studies Association. In addition to learning the ropes of law
and putting up a fierce fight all the way to the altars of US Supreme Court, Afrasiabi
took upon himself the task of defeating Harvard in the intellectual realm, by frustrating
their sinister attempt to marginalize him through his spate of Harvard publications.
Also, Afrasiabi tapped in the deep reservoir of pain and suffering he had endured by
becoming a first-rate poets, writing a poetic legal diary that is filled with poignant and
inspiring poems, including this one titled “Rebounding”:
“”The mockery of the chaff cannot harm the wheat.” (Rev. 7:9) The judges have
scattered you like a storm ripping through the field; you wander in your still pulsing
particles and gather up in a vessel that lets you relax. You see, I like to collect things.”
Sadly, Afrasiabi's repression was not limited to the abhorrent misconduct by
Harvard Police, it was also extended to the Cambridge Police, that appeased the
Harvard's power elite one day by subjecting him to another wrongful arrest, this time
accusing him of not having paid a ticket back in 1987. Subsequently, a judge in Newton
would confirm that Afrasiabi had indeed paid that ticket back then and there was no
ground for his arrest. Cambridge Police, however, was not simply content with putting
the cuffs on Afrasiabi's wrists and keeping him in their cell without letting him make
even one phone call, as permitted by law, worse, a lot worse, they nearly killed Afrasiabi
on the way to court, just like Freddie Gray in Baltimore, when they cuffed him from
behind and threw him in the back of a patty wagon that slammed on the brake after
going full speed, causing Afrasiabi to fly into an iron bar that nearly broke his neck and
landed him at Cambridge hospital. The link from Cambridge newspaper covering this
sad, and outrageous episode of police brutality is furnished at the bottom of this article.
Again, there would be no apology from Cambridge police, just as there has never been
one from their brethren at Harvard, even though their actions against Afrasiabi reminds
one of repressive police states in Central America, not the enlightened Cambridge and its
cherished institution of higher learning. According to Afrasiabi, by then he had come to
fully understand the dark side of Harvard that is an ocean apart from how it presents
itself, as an abode of nobility, to the outside world.
 As if the abovesaid is not enough to corroborate this author's claim that Afrasiabi's
battle with Harvard is, indeed, one of the greatest Harvard stories ever told, consider
this: In 2006, Afrasiabi appeared on television debating the state's governor, William
Weld, over Harvard's decision to invite Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami, as
well as another debate with CNN Headline's host, Glen Beck. In both these debates, as
well as an oped in Boston Globe titled “The governor is wrong on Khatami,” Afrasiabi
defended Harvard without ever mentioning the university's egregious mistreatment of
him. Anyone else would have jumped on the opportunity to criticize Harvard's callous
disregard for his human and civil and constitutional rights, yet Afrasiabi refrained as a
matter of principle. Around the same time, Afrasiabi had been invited by the faculty at
the Kennedy School to take part in a high-profile seminar at the law school, on the
subject of Iran's nuclear program, covered by Harvard Gazette. Yet, the very next day
Afasiabi receives a letter from the chief of Harvard police stating that if he showed up at
Harvard again he would be arrested. Professor Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., another
Afrasiabi supporter, reacted to chief Riley's letter by describing it as “very bizar even by
Harvard's standards” – that they could roll the red carpet for him one day and put his
name on a big poster posted all around the university and then the very next day threaten
to arrest him, but why? Wasn't he cleared of any wrongdoing? Didn't he suffer enough
by the ordeal of the false arrest, incarceration, solitary confinement, public defamation,
job loss, and the near loss of his life in the hands of Cambridge police on purely
colorable grounds? How can anyone at Harvard possibly justify their ruthless repression
of Afrasiabi year after year, decade after decade? It is absolutely shameful and,
definitely, a huge stigma on Harvard's shining record that only grows with the passage of
time.
To conclude, the epic, David and Goliath battle of Afrasiabi with Harvard is fully
documented in his book, Looking For Rights At Harvard. This book has a useful
appendix consisting of official court documents, letters of the handwriting experts, and
the like, confirming his complaint that he is a victim of a vicious and inhuman rights
abuse by Harvard and its cronies both inside and outside the university, in a word, a
travesty of justice and Harvard's much-professed liberal values. Time for Harvard to
apologize to Dr. Afrasiabi and make up for all the unjust damages to him has long
arrived.
Sources:
Looking For Rights At Harvard
Mike Wallace Defends Dr. Afrasiabi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=HL21nDnuqpY
Harvard Gazette: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/03/irans-nuclear-
ambitions/
Afrasiabi's personal website: www.kavehafrasiabi.com