(JNS) U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign hired Nasrina Bargzie, a former adviser of Harris’s in the White House on “Muslim, Arab and Gaza-related issues as well as reproductive rights, voting and democracy,” to “lead outreach to Muslim and Arab voters,” NBC News reported.
“I am honored to continue my work for the vice president, advising on a range of critical issues in this election, from democracy and reproductive rights to Muslim and Arab outreach,” Bargzie stated, per NBC.
Bargzie co-wrote a 2015 article in the UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice, at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, in which she noted “a wave of civil rights complaints” related to Israel and the “Palestinians”.
“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 U.S. Department of Education’s “handling of these complaints contributed to a chilling effect on university campuses discouraging robust discussion about Israel, Palestine and U.S. policy,” they added.
Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that Bargzie sought “to shut down investigations of the groups that harass and attack Jewish students.”
Klein connected Bargzie’s tenure in Harris’s office and the Democratic presidential candidate “increasingly and unjustifiably attacking Israel, including falsely implying that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians.”
“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,” Klein added, “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.”
Alan Dershowitz, law professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told JNS that Bargzie tilts the Harris campaign in an anti-Israel direction compared to the pro-Israel stance of Ilan Goldenberg, who leads Jewish voter outreach for the campaign.
“She appears to be much more one-sidedly anti-Israel than Ilan Goldenberg. It’s an imbalance,” Dershowitz told JNS. “The Muslim liaison appointment seems much more one-sidedly anti-Israel than the allegedly pro-Israel appointee seems pro-Israel, so it seems like an unbalanced couple of appointments.”
