Investigations find that new Biden senior policy advisor has ties to anti-Semtism and anti-ICE orgs
Biden's new White House hire from CUNY has a history working with groups aiming to abolish immigration security.
He is also connected to anti-Semitic activity—saying Israel engages in "ethnic cleansing."
Information surfaced earlier this summer about Ramzi Kassem—senior policy advisor for immigration at the Domestic Policy Council—who has ties to organizations looking to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is also connected to anti-Israel activity.
Kassem began work at the White House in August of 2022 and is on leave from his position as a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law until his planned return for the 2023-2024 academic year.
[RELATED: Bill proposes funding cuts after anti-Semitic CUNY Law graduation speech]
According to a review by the Washington Free Beacon, the CUNY professor spent much of his time in undergraduate school at Columbia University writing “scathing criticisms of the Jewish state.” He has also accused Israel in the past of engaging in “ethnic cleansing” and “systemic genocide.”
In an October 2000 article for the Columbia Daily Spectator, Kassem wrote that “The fact that Israel has no internationally recognized right to be there in the first place is conveniently omitted, and never mind that the citizens in question happen to be illegal settlers armed to the teeth by the Israeli military and heavily subsidized by their government.”
This is notable considering Campus Reform’s coverage of a detailed report earlier this year documenting how CUNY has quickly become the most systemically anti-Semitic university in the United States in just two years. Students and Faculty for Equality at the City University of New York (SAFE CUNY) compiled the report in late March.
The Daily Caller also noted that Kassem has a history of working with organizations seeing to abolish ICE.
Kassem was named a “freedom scholar” by the Marguerite Casey Foundation in 2020. The position is exclusive to those at the “forefront of abolitionist, Black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies.”
[RELATED: Yale law prof encourages people to ‘hide immigrants from ICE’]
That same year, the organization’s then-vice president of programs Jonathan Jayes-Green argued that “we need to abolish ICE” because this “amoral, cruel and rotten system cannot be reformed.”
Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
