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In fact, if a university sought to bring together the largest, most diverse group of credentialed, (in)famous, BDS-supporting, Israel-hating apologists for Palestinian terrorism, it would be difficult to top the CSRR.
Sahar Aziz founded the center in 2018 and currently serves as its director. Aziz accuses Israel of "disproportionate and brutal" retaliation against Palestinians and claims that its "genocidal" attack against Gaza is a "death by starvation policy and death by dehydration policy."
Under Aziz, the hierarchy descends with 11 Distinguished Senior Fellows. Among them are:
- John Esposito, founder of Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Esposito has long sought to soften the images of Hamas and Hezbollah, referring to them as "political groups." In 2006, after the terrorist group took control of Gaza, he complained that, "despite HAMAS' victory in free and democratic elections, the United States and Europe failed to give the party full recognition and support."
- Joseph Massad, the Columbia University professor who celebrated the October 7 attacks as "awesome," "astounding," "striking," "innovative" and "victories of the resistance."
- Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, chair of Princeton University's Near Eastern studies department and a longtime Islamic Republic of Iran apologist who wrote that Khomeini's "new regulatory regime" was a boon to Iranian women, with improvements in their "education, employment, life expectancy, and health" over "the years of modernization under the Pahlavi regime." In May 2024, Ghamari-Tabrizi visited Princeton's anti-Israel "encampment" to offer encouragement and read from his latest book.
- Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa's former Ambassador to the United States (and friend of Hamas) who says he does not consider Israel to be Jewish or Iran an enemy but does consider Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin "one of the greatest inspirations."
- Susan M. Akram, a law professor at Boston University, reportedly claims that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist organizations but rather legitimate "resistance movements."
There are also Senior Fellows, Law Fellows, and 155 Faculty Affiliates. The standouts among affiliates:
- Hatem Bazian: Founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) – two Hamas-related organizations – who has called for an Intifada in America.
- Nader Hashemi, director of Esposito's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, famously blamed Mossad for the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie.
- Jasbir Puar, director of women's and gender studies at Rutgers and author of the neo-blood libel that Israel steals organs from dead terrorists.
- Juan Cole, University of Michigan professor who argues that Israelis need "to behave like normal human beings instead of genocidal psychopaths."
- Lara Sheehi, the psychology professor who made George Washington University the subject of a Title VI discrimination lawsuit for creating a hostile environment for Jewish students in her classes.
- Noura Erakat, professor of Africana studies and criminal justice at Rutgers. On October 7, 2023, Erakat posted on X that "Any condemnation of violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation."
- Emmaia Gelman, director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, who has declared war on the ADL: "Its aim is genocide, and its aim is war".
This brief list only scratches the surface. The Rutgers CSRR has so thoroughly cornered the market in Israel-hating professors that if they were all together on a boat that sank, the anti-Israel academic "resistance" would all but disappear.
In 2023, when the public learned that Adeel A. Mangi, Joe Biden's nominee for judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, not only served on the CSRR's advisory board but also arranged for his law firm to donate money to the CSRR, his nomination was doomed. That prompted Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to probe the CSRR for its radical ties, and on February 6, 2024, they issued a letter charging that "The work of the Center, its promotion of terrorist sympathizers, and its platforming of radical ideologues is troubling."
The letter was signed by Senators Lindsay Graham, Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, John Kennedy, Thom Tillis, and Marsha Blackburn.
In the House of Representatives, the Committee on Education and Workforce conducted its own investigation of Rutgers University. Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) released a letter too on March 27, 2024, noting that the "CSRR has become notorious as a hotbed of radical antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-terrorist activity."
The Investigative Project on Terrorism urges the ten Senators on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Foxx, new House Education and Workforce Chair Tim Walberg, and their staffs to complete the work they started last year. Nothing has changed at the CSRR since their investigations.
When Marco Rubio expelled CSRR Distinguished Senior Fellow and South Africa's former Ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, he called him a "race-baiting politician who hates America." How many race-baiting academics who hate America are fellows or affiliates of CSRR? How many are not citizens?
Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.
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