The philanthropy network steering the wealth of Democratic megadonor George Soros awarded a paid fellowship to the leader of a law school’s anti-Israel office facing a Senate investigation for promoting terrorist sympathizers, records show.
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans this month requested Rutgers University by Feb. 20 turn over funding and budget information on its Center for Security, Race and Rights, which the lawmakers accused of spreading “vile antisemitic propaganda,” while its advisory board included Adeel Mangi, a judicial nominee for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rutgers Law professor Sahar Aziz, who directs the center, pocketed $143,000 from the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations network for its equality fellowship to advance “racial justice,” according to disclosures on the grantmaker’s website.
That Aziz was a fellow through OSF for 18 months beginning in 2021 is likely to light a fire under Republicans to obtain financial records from Rutgers on the Center for Security, Race and Rights, which 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.” Soros is a chief foe of conservatives, who have long held that the 93-year-old billionaire’s staggering grants through OSF, such as to pro-Palestinian organizations linked to terrorism, fuel societal decay. OSF’s expenditures in 2022 were $1.3 billion, with at least $37.7 million of that sum being directed to the Middle East and North Africa.
“I am not at all surprised that the center’s director received funding from George Soros’s web of dark money,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner, noting he and his Judiciary panel colleagues aim to vet the center’s funding sources and “promotion of antisemitic propaganda.”
In their letter last Tuesday, senators expressed concern to Rutgers about its center, which received $6,500 from Mangi and $13,000 from his law firm, Patterson Belknap, over the years. The center hosted a 2021 event on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which featured Sami al Arian, an ex-University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. It also featured Hatem Bazian, a University of California, Berkeley professor who has supported “intifada” against Israel, and Rabab Abdulhadi, a San Francisco State University professor who’s hosted events with convicted Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Leila Khaled.
A spokesperson for OSF told the Washington Examiner that its 2021 fellows finished their program in 2023, asserting the grantmaker has not directly funded the Rutgers-housed center and did not support Aziz at the time of its 9/11 anniversary event. A description under the Soros fellowship website page for Aziz says she sought “to support a diverse set of academics and advocates working to better understand and combat racialized national security narratives that disproportionately impact communities of color.”
“The Open Society Foundations is a leader in the effort to advance racial justice in the United States, and in the fight against antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate,” OSF told the Washington Examiner. “We are proud to support individuals working to expand justice and opportunity for historically marginalized communities through innovative projects and research.”
Rutgers is one of many universities across the U.S. that has been blasted by members of Congress for anti-Israel activities on its campus after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In December of last year, Rutgers administrators suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter over vandalism and disruption of classes, though the group was reinstated in New Brunswick soon after and instead handed a one-year probation, NorthJersey.com reported.
Aziz has been the director of the Rutgers-housed center since its 2018 founding. The professor previously taught at both Boston University and Texas A&M University and had a one-year stint from 2008 to 2009 as a senior policy adviser for the office of civil rights under the Department of Homeland Security, according to Aziz’s resume on file with Rutgers.
Also on Aziz’s resume: her foreign policy fellowship gig between 2016 and 2017 for the liberal Brookings Institution’s center in Doha, the capital of gas-rich Qatar, a key backer of Hamas. The FBI in 2022 notably seized the electronic data of former Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who became president of Brookings in 2017, as part of an investigation into whether he illegally lobbied for Qatar’s government. Allen resigned from the think tank in 2022, and federal prosecutors decided against criminally charging him this January.
Former Brookings Doha Center fellow Saleem Ali said in 2014 he was instructed by the think tank to “not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers,” according to the New York Times.
Aziz, who clerked from 2004 to 2005 for U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland Judge Andre M. Davis, has been criticized by GOP senators for sharing a pro-Hamas propaganda post in October 2023 stating, “Turns out there no rapes or ‘beheaded babies’! Israel & its MSM accomplices are making up so many outrageous lies to distract from its carnage in Gaza!”
She signed an open letter in 2021 that said, “We are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism.” The Rutgers professor declared just days after Oct. 7 of last year that “standing with Israel” after 1,200 civilians were murdered in the Jewish state was seemingly equivalent to supporting Hamas.
“‘Standing with #Israel’ now means standing with ethnic cleansing and war crimes against #Palestinians; just as Standing with #Hamas means standing with terrorism against #Israeli civilians,” Aziz posted on X on Oct. 14. “You either support human rights for all people or you don’t.”
On Monday, the conservative Judicial Crisis Network nonprofit group launched an advertising campaign Monday slamming Mangi, the judicial nominee, and his ties to the Rutgers-housed center.
“The revelation that the center’s founding director received an Open Society fellowship further indicts this antisemitic, America-hating organization that Adeel Mangi advised and supported,” Carrie Severino, president of JCN, told the Washington Examiner.
Rutgers and Aziz did not return requests for comment.