Council on American Islamic relations calls for two universities to ‘immediately revoke’ hiring of Biden foreign policy alumni
Two Biden foreign policy officials should lose their academic appointments, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The Muslim advocacy group called former U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Middle East policy coordinator Brett McGurk “war criminals,” in a petition and two letters directed at Harvard University and the University of New Hampshire.
Harvard hired both Sullivan and McGurk for roles this semester. UNH also appointed Sullivan to a “senior fellow” role.
Both officials “played key roles in developing, justifying and executing the Biden administration’s most disastrous foreign policy decisions,” according to CAIR.
These decisions include “the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that ended with a drone attack on an innocent Afghan family and weapons transfers to support the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza despite federal law forbidding those transfers.”
“Government officials who flout federal law, lie to the American public, and enable deadly foreign policy catastrophes should not be able to cash out on their disastrous time in office by failing up and taking up positions at prominent colleges and universities,” CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Mitchell stated in a news release.
The group did not respond to emails and phone calls in the past month seeking further comment and any update on the petition.
Harvard and UNH also did not respond to similar outreach requests, seeking comment on the petition.
However, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi criticized the petition in emailed comments to The Fix.
“CAIR has a long record of support for antisemitism and terrorism, and these statements are no exception,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken of the Coalition for Jewish values said via email.
He particularly criticized the group’s use of the term genocide, writing:
The term genocide, coined by a Jewish writer during the Holocaust, requires ‘intent to destroy’ a group, rather than any alternative explanation. So there are two options: 1) CAIR so devalues Jewish lives that it cannot imagine the Israelis might want to rescue hostages or eliminate the danger of the explicitly genocidal Hamas terror organization. Or 2) CAIR knows Israel is trying to prevent a genocide, but wants that genocide to happen, and is intentionally projecting its own hateful agenda upon the intended victims.
He also alleged the Muslim group “exists to fuel antisemitism.”
Menken also noted that CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, praised the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege the walls of the concentration camp on October 7,” Awad previously said.
“Yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their own land that they were not allowed to walk in,” he said. “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”
He later clarified that he “condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on October 7th and past Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.”
CAIR has previously convinced other universities to cancel people it dislikes, including Dr. Elon Glassberg, a surgeon with the Israeli Defense Forces. Its Maryland office thanked the university’s medical school for canceling Glassberg’s planned January speech about surgery after it generated 6,000 emails in opposition, as The Fix previously reported.
Medical school officials canceled the event, citing vague “safety concerns” and the fear “some debate” might occur, as The Fix reported, based on emails it obtained via a public records request.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A petition photo from CAIR demanding the cancellation of two Biden officials; Council on American-Islamic Relations
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