Lawyers affiliated with an anti-Israel office facing a Senate investigation poured tens of thousands of dollars into Democratic campaign coffers, records show.
Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights is under the spotlight due to federal judicial nominee Adeel Mangi’s previous role advising the New Jersey-based group, which received a request for funding records in February from Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans looking into its promotion of “terrorist-sympathizers.” The Rutgers-housed center’s director Sahar Aziz, who was awarded a paid fellowship from the philanthropy network of left-wing billionaire George Soros, and numerous academics linked to the center have cut checks over the years to congressional Democrats and presidential campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The cash transfers underscore how Democratic lawmakers often receive financial boosts from anti-Israel activists and their allies at major universities in the United States. Rutgers University recently handed a one-year probation to its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which was suspended for vandalism and disruption of classes for a short period after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In a letter last week to Rutgers, Senate Republicans accused the school’s Center for Security, Race and Rights of spreading antisemitism, noting that it hosted a 2021 event on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks featuring a professor who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.
The Rutgers-housed center also equated condemnation of Hamas last year to attempts to “ignore over 75 years of colonial violence and the horrific consequences born out of these decades of oppression and attempted erasure.”
“They need to have a house cleaning on the Democratic side and figure out whether they’re going to be the party of moderates or Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN),” Tom Jones, president of the conservative American Accountability Foundation watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner. “They have a chance to do the right thing, but they seem incapable of getting their act together.”
The Rutgers-housed center’s operations taking aim at Israel have become a flashpoint in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has raised concerns over the center receiving donations from Mangi and his law firm, Patterson Belknap, according to the nominee’s written testimony in December 2023. To Republicans, it’s disqualifying that President Joe Biden‘s pick for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sat between 2019 and 2023 on the advisory board for the center — the director of which has downplayed Oct. 7 and equated “standing with Israel” to supporting Hamas.
One major Rutgers-tied donor to Democrats is George Bisharat, a University of California, San Francisco, law professor who doubles as a senior fellow at the Center for Security, Race and Rights. Bisharat, who is often quoted in the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera anti-Israel website, has given roughly $118,000 to campaigns, including those for Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Summer Lee (D-PA), Federal Election Commission filings show.
In a 2009 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Bisharat called for dismantling the Jewish state and told San Francisco’s ABC7 News on Oct. 8 last year, “I think this is one of the most significant moments of Palestinian resistance to Israel that we have ever seen,” referring to the Hamas-led attack one day earlier.
Bisharat did not return a request for comment.
Stephen Dycus, a Vermont Law School professor who is also a senior fellow at the Rutgers-housed center, has donated roughly $10,000 to federal Democratic campaigns, according to filings. He’s directed cash to support Biden, failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Sorry,” Dycus told the Washington Examiner. “No comment.”
Aziz, the director of the Rutgers-housed center, has donated a little more than $1,000 over the years to Democrats, including Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT). The professor has also published 13 articles since 2013 in Al Jazeera, including one in October of last year accusing Israel of “war crimes” for retaliating against Hamas. The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday that Aziz was a fellow between 2021 and 2023 at the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations grantmaking network.
“We have learned from our African American sisters,” Aziz, who did not return a request for comment, wrote in an op-ed on Oct. 31. “We do not need any approval or permission from anyone to fight for what we know is right. We just need white feminists to get out of our way so that we can do the work of real feminism in solidarity with our Palestinian sisters.”
Democratic campaigns, including those for Warnock, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Obama, and others, have also received donations from fellows Colin Kalmbacher and Daanish Faruqi at the Rutgers-housed center.
Faruqi, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, worked for the Obama State Department as a qualitative researcher, according to his LinkedIn account. He penned a December 2023 op-ed in Al Jazeera titled, “Israel is using the same tactics in Gaza that al-Assad employed in Syria.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Kalmbacher and Faruqi, who did not respond to messages.
President Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, which opposes Mangi’s nomination, said lawmakers should return any donations from individuals affiliated with the Rutgers-housed center.
“This center should be disbanded immediately,” Klein told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a disgrace. If this was an anti-black or anti-gay center, it would be shut down instantly. There’d be no question.”
Republicans gave Rutgers a Feb. 20 deadline to provide requested records on the center, including some in connection to its annual budget. Rutgers recently disclosed that more than 21% of the university’s revenue in 2024 comes from the state of New Jersey.
Rutgers did not return a request for comment.
“They’re treating Jews like second-class citizens,” Klein said.
