A leading American university was sued Wednesday over a disinformation campaign allegedly financed by the United Arab Emirates, accused of seeding false narratives that linked academics to a radical group in the Middle East.
Farid Hafez, an Austrian political scientist, filed the $10 million lawsuit against George Washington University and Lorenzo Vidino, the director of its program on extremism.
The suit, which was filed in District Court in Washington, alleges that "GWU and Vidino engaged in a well cloaked conspiracy to defraud authorities, academia and the fourth estate," a term used to refer to the press, while "holding themselves out as independent and objective academic actors." "Vidino was a hired gun selling and repackaging unverified rumor and gossip with the veneer of academic objectivity and scholarship, and with a mind toward ruining individuals and institutions," the suit said.Hafez, a visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, was detained in 2020 during Operation Luxor, a series of police raids against Austrian Muslims and businesses. No one who was implicated was convicted, and the operation was ruled unlawful in 2021.
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