Courtesy of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

Robert Malley ’84, currently on leave from his position as the United States’ special envoy to Iran, will teach at Yale this fall while under investigation for alleged mishandling of classified documents. 

Joe Biden appointed Malley to the position in 2021, but on June 29 of this year, the state department announced that he would be placed on unpaid leave while his security clearance was under review. On July 10, CBS reported that the FBI had become involved in the investigation. 

“I will remain on leave from the State Department,” Malley told the News in an email. “As I have said from the outset of the review of my security clearance, I have absolute faith that the matter will be resolved favorably and I will return to government service in due course.” 

On Aug. 15, Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs announced Malley as one of eight new senior fellows. 

As a senior fellow, Malley will spend the year teaching and mentoring Yale students; this semester, he will teach a course titled “International Politics of the Middle East: Perception and Misperception in Four Crises.”

But Malley’s Jackson fellowship appointment has drawn scrutiny by American politicians and Iran scholars who believe his ongoing investigation should be cause for concern. 

“Yale should ask itself why a man under FBI investigation should teach young students about national security,” Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist and former senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense Democracies in Washington D.C., told the News. “This is a great disservice to the students and terrible for Yale’s reputation.”

The State Department has remained tight-lipped about the reasons for Malley’s involuntary leave, and the FBI has not commented on their role in the investigation. But on Sunday, the Tehran Times, an Iranian news outlet, published what appeared to be an April 21 memorandum sent to Malley by the director of the Department’s Diplomatic Security Office, Erin E. Smart. 

The memo stated that the office had “received information that raises serious security concerns” in accordance with three national security adjudicative guidelines: personal conduct, handling protected information and use of information technology. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, and the legitimacy of the memo has not been officially confirmed. 

Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department adviser on Iran, tweeted Sunday evening that the published document “looks authentic” and suggests that Malley “lied about not knowing why his clearance was pulled.”

“The letter looks legitimate, as confirmed to me by former State employees,” Nader said. “If it is accurate, then it shows that Robert Malley was dishonest when stating that he was not aware of the reasons for his dismissal from the State Department.” 

Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote publicly that the memo “is extremely concerning” if authentic and called on the State Department for greater transparency around the “ongoing Robert Malley saga.”

After news of Malley’s suspension first broke on June 29, the professor stated that he had “been informed that [his] security clearance is under review,” but had “not been provided any further information.” 

Abbas Amanat, a history professor emeritus, former chair of the Council on Middle East Studies and former director of the Yale Program in Iranian Studies, told the News that he “favors Malley’s appointment.”

“Dr. Malley is an accomplished and experienced observer of the Arab Middle East and surely Yale students greatly benefit from his knowledge and insight,” Amanat said. “Even if he may have been suspended out of disagreement with the U.S. administration, it cannot be a cause for concern.” 

Amanat pointed out that “many people have been investigated by the FBI,” and if indeed this is the case with Dr. Malley, “one should not rush to any judgment.” He also added that his favorable view of the appointment is independent of Malley’s performance as the special envoy on Iran, which he said is “open to criticism.”

But Roya Hakakian, an Iranian American journalist who is a Davenport College fellow and serves on the Council for Foreign Relations, took a harder stance.

In an email written to the News, Hakakian compared Yale’s decision to award Malley a fellowship despite his ongoing investigation to the “threats leveled at the FBI by Trump supporters.”

“Both show their contempt for our legal procedures — one by attacking our public servants, and the other by embracing those who are under investigation by our public servants,” Hakakian wrote in the email. “Both dangerously heighten the current divide in our country and further erode the trust in our democracy.”

Hakakian added that while the Trump supporters may be “misguided or ignorant,” the same cannot be said “about an elite institution such as Yale.”

A spokesperson for the Jackson School of Global Affairs acknowledged that Malley was on leave from the State Department but declined further comment.

Also on Aug. 15, Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs announced Malley as a visiting professor, where he is teaching a similar class about foreign policy this fall, the same term he will be teaching at Yale. 

After the announcement, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Princeton alumnus, took to X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — to voice his discontent. 

“Pitiful. Look who my alma mater just made a prof,” Cruz wrote in a post. “Rob Malley was such a pro-Iran radical that he was FIRED from Biden admin & had his security clearance stripped for ‘mishandling classified docs’ (the details are still hidden).” 

Malley, a Yale College graduate, gained prominence as the lead negotiator in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Malley also acted as an advisor to Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, but parted ways with the campaign after the British Times reported that Malley had been in discussion with the militant Palestinian organization Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. 

As special envoy to Iran, Malley looked to execute President Biden’s U.S.-Iran foreign policy objectives, particularly the effort to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump pulled out of in 2018.

Despite substantial commentary and speculation, the only information released by the State Department so far is that Malley is on unpaid leave while his security clearance is reviewed. This technicality, according to Jason Brodsky, a Middle East analyst and policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, is what has made Malley’s hiring at Yale and Princeton difficult to assess. 

“This controversy is a symptom of a broader problem: the lack of transparency over this situation that has emanated from the State Department,” Brodsky told the News. “There has also been a lack of media and congressional scrutiny. Some of that is a function of Congress not being in session right now. But when it gets back, the American people deserve to know the facts. The sooner these come to light, the better for academic institutions like Yale to be able to make informed decisions about its faculty.”

Malley’s Yale course will meet for its first class session on Thursday, Aug. 31.