Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris' appointment of a campaign adviser on Arab and Muslim affairs and on issues surrounding the war in Gaza has caused anger and concern among some Jewish organizations and community leaders in the United States. This comes after an academic article and past statements by attorney Nasrina Bargzie have resurfaced, in which she called the complaints of Jewish students on campuses regarding antisemitism "organized legal bullying." In addition, she supported the organizations behind the violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses. The activities of some of those organizations have been banned over their violence.
The 2015 article criticizes the U.S. Department of Education for accepting and investigating complaints from Jewish and Israeli students about discrimination on campus. “This article rejects the central premise of these complaints: that students suffer from a hostile educational environment in violation of their civil rights when a particular country or government with which they may identify is subjected to vigorous critique or academic scrutiny,” she and her co-author wrote. The article was published in the UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice at the University of California, San Francisco.
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Nasrina Bargzie, Harris presidential campaign adviser on Arab and Muslim affairs and on issues surrounding the war in Gaza.
(Photo: Screenshot)
The article also states that: "The threat of OCR investigations forces universities to ‘tread carefully’ and sometimes leads to self-censorship or overregulation of student activities.” According to Bargzie, “Organizations that have filed or threatened these complaints have paraded this chilling effect as a victory, even when the complaints turn out to be factually meritless or legally unfounded. The stigma and chilling effect associated with these complaints and investigations has a disproportionate impact on Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian community members, many of whom are actively engaged with this issue on campuses.”
Bargzie also detailed how the "strategic use" of legal complaints disproportionately affects "marginalized communities," reinforcing the idea of "legal bullying." Bargzie and her co-author of the article – the human rights lawyer Yaman Salahi, an Al-Jazeera columnist who often criticizes the "Israeli lobby" on campuses in the U.S. – acknowledge at the outset the organizations that stand behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses and whose activities have been partially banned: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and The Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
Morton Klein, president of the right-wing conservative organization Zionist Organization of America, said that his organization is "very concerned about Bargzie's call to effectively close investigations against groups that harass and attack Jewish students." According to Klein: “We are deeply concerned about Nasrina Bargzie’s support of Students for Justice in Palestine — the group perpetrating numerous violent anti-Jewish actions on college campuses across the country and about Bargzie’s accusations that Jewish students and organizations are engaged in ‘organized legal bullying’ for taking legal action demanding that universities protect Jewish students.
According to Klein, the appointment of Bargzie testifies to the fact that Harris has "increasingly and unjustifiably attacking Israel, including falsely implying that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians.”
The announcement of the appointment of Bargzie, who had already worked as a policy adviser in Vice President Kamala Harris’s White House office, came at the same time as the announcement of the appointment of Ilan Goldenberg as the campaign's adviser on Jewish community affairs.
Goldenberg, who was born in Jerusalem and grew up in New Jersey, was previously the chief of staff of Martin Indyk when he was the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians in 2013, and worked until his new appointment at the Israel Policy Forum established by Yitzhak Rabin and working to promote the two-state solution. He too was previously an adviser to Harris on Middle East issues, and is considered a sympathetic appointment to Israel, but critical of the Netanyahu government.
The lawyer close to Netanyahu, Professor Alan Dershowitz, said that the appointment of Bargzie at the same time as that of Goldenberg "is not balanced." According to him, Bargzie "is much more one-sided anti-Israel. It's an imbalance. The person responsible for the relations of the Muslim community seems much more one-sided anti-Israel than the alleged pro-Israel appointment, so it looks like a pair of unbalanced appointments."
Born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Bargzie lived in the war zone during the Soviet invasion of the country and later spent three years as a refugee in Pakistan before moving to California in 1985. She graduated from UC Berkeley Law School in 2005 and joined the institution as a faculty member. In 2022, she began serving as a policy advisor to Harris on Muslim, Arab and Gaza issues, as well as issues of fertility and childbirth, voting and democracy.
Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, told Ynet that "Nasrina helped implement the country's first strategy to combat antisemitism in the White House. We are proud to add her and Ilan to the campaign."