(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Jan. 24) If Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Democratic colleagues who claim to oppose antisemitism put their votes where their mouths are, they will oppose President Joe Biden’s nomination of Adeel Mangi, a left-wing radical, to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mangi’s nomination barely survived a party-line vote last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where several Democrats were said to be worried about his fitness for the job. He serves on the advisory board for the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, and most criticism of the center revolves around a panel it hosted on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks which featured speakers with ties to, or a history of advocating, terrorist causes. Even after that 9/11 panel drew unfavorable attention, Mangi stayed on its advisory board, but now claims he was unaware of the event.
The group is, however, objectionable for more than the one panel discussion, and Mangi’s long support for it is disqualifying. He not only served on the CSRR board for four years, until shortly before being nominated for the judgeship in 2023, but also donated $6,500 to it while his law firm donated another $13,000. This isn’t just lending his name at arm’s length, but a larger embrace of its activities and mission.
CSRR’s affiliations with extremist groups are lengthy. Of the 9/11 event panelists, one was Dr. Sami al Arian, a former professor who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Another was Dr. Rabab Abulhadi, a “senior scholar” of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program, who organized panels featuring terrorist Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Khaled was known for two airplane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s. Abulhadi says she “idolizes” Khaled specifically because she hijacked planes…. [The full editorial is here.]