A center at Rutgers University is under scrutiny by Congress due to its involvement in efforts seen as sympathetic to terrorism and hostile to Jews. Recently, the Center for Security, Race and Rights—run by Palestinian-American professor Sahar Aziz—has come under fire for advising Palestinian and Muslim students on ways to avoid detection by U.S. immigration officials. Among the guidance provided were tips like locking phones and using strong passwords, part of what the center called “digital hygiene” practices.
The guidance was shared during a pair of “Know Your Rights” workshops on April 28 and May 7, in response to what organizers described as an increased federal effort—led by the Trump administration—to target international students who have expressed pro-Hamas or anti-Israel views during campus demonstrations.
Golnaz Fakhimi, who led the first session, recommended disabling biometric features like facial or fingerprint recognition and encouraged participants to rely on complex passcodes. She warned students that immigration officials at U.S. borders possess advanced tools that can retrieve even deleted content from electronic devices.
At the follow-up session on May 7, Raquel Aldana of UC Davis told attendees that universities should not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She urged academic institutions to clearly outline which areas—such as dorms, classrooms, or labs—should be considered off-limits to ICE personnel.
Although these kinds of legal rights sessions are not unusual in the nonprofit world, the fact that they were hosted at a publicly funded institution like Rutgers raises potential red flags. The school receives about $400 million annually in federal aid. Congressional Republicans recently opened an inquiry into another nonprofit, the Chinese-American Planning Council, over similar guidance allegedly aimed at helping people avoid ICE encounters.
The Department of Education is currently reviewing whether Rutgers, along with several other universities, has allowed antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric to flourish on campus. The Trump administration has already taken punitive action against other elite schools, including freezing $2 billion in funding to Harvard and reaching compliance agreements with institutions such as Columbia. Rutgers has so far avoided direct action.
In addition to federal funding, Rutgers benefits from more than $1 billion in state funding, with over $560 million of that coming from federal research grants. The Center for Security, Race and Rights operates within Rutgers Law School and is partially funded through both the university’s central budget and its official fundraising foundation. Aziz, who also teaches classes on national security and Islamophobia, launched the center in 2018.
Despite not being formally sanctioned yet, congressional Republicans are already conducting a probe into the center. Lawmakers have cited what they describe as a pattern of “virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism” among its staff and guest speakers.
Among the center’s more controversial events was a program marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that featured Sami Al-Arian, a former academic convicted for financially supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Some of the center’s most prominent affiliated scholars have expressed open support for Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who is listed as a distinguished fellow, described the attacks as “awesome,” “astounding,” “striking,” “innovative,” and “victories of the resistance.” At a Rutgers event in December, Massad falsely blamed the Israeli army, rather than Hamas, for shooting civilians at a music festival on that day.
Other Rutgers center associates have also sparked backlash. Susan Akram has labeled Hamas and Hezbollah as “resistance movements,” while Lara Sheehi has referred to Hamas fighters as “martyrs” and voiced support for their armed actions against Israel, according to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon.
Aziz herself has long drawn criticism for her stance on Hamas and Israel. After the 2021 Hamas rocket attacks, she signed a statement that read: “We are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism.”
During the May 7 seminar, Aziz denounced what she called the “Israelization of American foreign policy” and accused the Trump administration of singling out Palestinian and Muslim students who are “trying to stop the genocide that’s happening right now in Gaza.”
She also urged Jewish-American organizations to push back against what she described as a right-wing crackdown masquerading as concern for Jewish safety. “It’s so important for Jewish-American groups who oppose this type of fascist behavior by groups claiming to be trying to protect Jews that they openly and vocally respond to that and reject that,” she said.
{Matzav.com}