A leading civil rights official for the Department of Homeland Security has previously denied ties to a Rutgers University think tank, which legislative investigators describe as a “hotbed of extreme antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-terror activity.”
Before joining the Department of Homeland Security as an agent for civil rights and civil rights, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia worked as a faculty member of the Rutgers Law School Center for Security, Race, and Rights. Wadhia currently advises DHS command on the implications of agency policies for civil rights and leads people inquiries into legal rights complaints.
However, Wadhia’s involvement with the Rutgers Center might cast doubt on her ability to perform the task. This year, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce opened an investigation into Rutgers ‘ failure to address anti-Semitic routines on campus. The Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights is the subject of the investigation, which has come under scrutiny as a result of the confirmation hearing for Biden’s nominee for criminal chair Adeel Mangi, who previously served on the agency’s advisory committee until last year.
Sen. Josh Hawley ( R., Mo. ), a part of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said Wadhia’s “ties to pro- criminal groups should be fully disqualifying”.
” Either the Administration is n’t vetting its employees and nominees, or it simply does n’t care about their anti- Israel connections”, he told the Washington Free Beacon.
Weeks before Wadhia joined the core, it hosted an event, marking the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, that featured Sami al- Arian, who was convicted of providing material support to the Arab Islamic Jihad, a extremist group.
The core blamed Israel’s” colonial murder” and “decades of tyranny” against Palestinians for the October 7 Hamas assault, which the core called” Hamas’s October 7th functioning”. After the party’s 9/11 event with albert- Aristotelian in 2021, Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer ( N. J. ) The think container is being” castigated and alienated” by providing a platform to languages” with ties to radical extremist organizations.”
That did n’t deter Wadhia, who joined the center in early 2022, according to an archived version of the center’s website.
Former Penn State law professor Wadhia has collaborated attentively with core producer Sahar Aziz, who claimed after the Hamas strike that” Israel & its [mainstream media ] partners are making up so many outrageous lies to divert from its destruction in Gaza”! Aziz in May 2021 defended Hamas’s attacks on Israel, signing an opened letter that said,” We are in awe of the Arab struggle to avoid aggressive profession, removal, destruction, and the development of Israeli settler colonialism”.
Wadhia has contributed over the years to Aziz’s research. Aziz thanked Wadhia in 2018 for providing “insightful feedback” to her academic journal article” A Muslim Registry: The Precursor to Internment”?
Some of Wadhia’s fellow faculty affiliates, who are academics who work at institutions other than Rutgers, have been the subject of congressional investigation into their anti-Semitic remarks.
One faculty affiliate is Hatem Bazian, the cofounder of Students for Justice in Palestine. The anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including the false claim that the Israeli government steals Palestinians ‘ organs, are being promoted by Bazian.
Following the Hamas attack, Students for Justice in Palestine has organized some of the country’s most uprising anti-Israel demonstrations in schools. Following the attack, the group’s George Washington University chapter projected pro-Hamas slogans like “glory to our martyrs” on school buildings. Gottheimer, the New Jersey Democrat, has accused the Rutgers chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine of “intimidat]ing ] Jewish students”.
Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab politics at Columbia University, is another faculty member of the Rutgers center. Massad referred to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack as “awesome” and touted the terrorist group’s use of motorized paragliders as a feat of “innovative Palestinian resistance”. A university student who had served in the Israel Defense Forces was asked by Massad how many Palestinians had been killed by the student in accordance with a civil rights lawsuit against Columbia.
Massad pushed anti- Israel conspiracy theories at an event with Aziz, the Rutgers center director, on Dec. 4. For instance, he claimed that Israeli armed forces—not Hamas—engaged in the “indiscriminate strafing” of music festival attendees attacked on Oct. 7.
At Penn State, Wadhia led the school’s Center for Immigrants ‘ Rights Clinic, which pushed for relaxed immigration laws. She oversaw the center’s research reports, one of which featured a defense of the” Holy Land Five,” Islamic charity leaders who had been found guilty of raising money for a Hamas front group.
Wadhia has worked tirelessly to end the deportation of felons who have served a sentence in prison. She has lamented the use of the term “illegal alien” and pushed for the deportation of illegal aliens who have been found guilty of a serious felony, according to the Daily Caller.
Requests for comment were not responded to by the Rutgers Center and the Department of Homeland Security.
