On November 22, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials arrested Vahid Abedini, the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He was held and questioned for unknown reasons for three days before being released on November 25.
Abedini is an Iranian political scientist who researches international relations and comparative politics, with expertise in Iranian elites and political factions. He was arrested at the airport while on his way to Washington, D.C. for a Middle East Studies Association conference. At the time of his arrest, Abedini was in the US legally on an H1-B visa, originally at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where Abedini had worked as a visiting assistant professor, and subsequently at the University of Oklahoma. (Universities and other employers typically apply to sponsor H1-B visas for highly-skilled workers from other countries to work in the US. Approved visas are often transferred between institutions when a sponsored scholar moves to a new host institution.) Abedini had no criminal record. According to Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, Abedini “was detained for standard questioning and was released.”
Abedini’s arrest occurred against the background of increasing restrictions on international students and scholars in the United States. In the spring of 2025, the US government temporarily imprisoned a number of international students and scholars on the stated basis that their presence in the US allegedly posed “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” These arrests did not follow normal procedures, and government officials attempted to cancel or revoke visas and permits and deport the international students and scholars arrested. Often this took place without advance notice and without any hearings or opportunities to contest the alleged factual basis.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about the arrest and prolonged detention of an international scholar legally present in the country. In the absence of any publicly available evidence justifying the detention, such an act appears to be an act of intimidation. Moreover, the fact that such a detention took place while the scholar was attempting to attend a major academic conference, not only impaired his own scholar activity and engagement with academic colleagues, but also may reasonably have a chilling effect on other scholars working in the US on visas from traveling within the US, impairing the free exchange of ideas.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/us/vahid-abedini-oklahoma-professor-ice.html
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-professor-was-released-after-3-days-in-ice-detention-his-colleagues-fear-a-new-normal
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/state/2025/11/25/vahid-abedini-oklahoma-professor-detained-by-ice-released-after-two-days/87463905007/