A top Biden administration official shares ties to an anti-Israel think tank that is facing a congressional investigation and was advised by an embattled federal judicial nominee.
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, the officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, was a faculty affiliate in 2023 at the Rutgers Law School Center for Security, Race, and Rights, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The anti-Israel Rutgers center has been under the spotlight in recent months amid Republican lawmakers raising concerns over its events with terrorist allies, including Sami al Arian, a professor convicted in 2006 for aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. That scrutiny from Capitol Hill originally stemmed from the fact that Adeel Mangi, the White House’s seemingly doomed pick for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was on the center’s advisory board until 2023.
That Wadhia was a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers center is cause for concern to some lawmakers — including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. When it comes to Mangi, several Democratic senators have said they oppose his nomination, meaning he will need GOP support to get confirmed. Senate opposition is due to Mangi’s role for the center and for Alliance of Families for Justice, a left-wing legal group.
“Either the administration isn’t vetting its employees and nominees, or it simply doesn’t care about their anti-Israel connections,” Hawley said.
According to an archived version of the Rutgers center’s website, Wadhia joined the group in early 2022. That was just months after the center’s event with Arian in 2021.
Meanwhile, on the heels of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel last year, the center equated condemnation of the terrorist group with attempts to “ignore over 75 years of colonial violence and the horrific consequences born out of these decades of oppression and attempted erasure.”
Wadhia also worked closely in recent years with Sahar Aziz, director of the Rutgers center and a recipient of a paid fellowship from the philanthropy of Democratic megadonor George Soros, the Washington Examiner reported. In 2018, Aziz thanked Wadhia for dishing out “insightful feedback” in connection to Aziz’s article, “A Muslim Registry: The Precursor to Internment?”
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In late March, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sent letters to top Rutgers officials on the center, which she said has a “pattern of deeply troubling incidents.” The Republican included mention of the event with Arian, among others.
“I have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Rutgers’ response to antisemitism on its campuses,” Foxx wrote to the school’s president, Jonathan Holloway, as well as other campus leaders.
