“Be More Anti-Zionist,” New Harvard Law School Fellow Urged

Faulted Biden for aiding Israel’s “mass slaughter” in Gaza

Harvard Law School is paying an anti-Israel lawyer to advise students on “public interest” careers.

Harvard Law School is paying to bring a far-left anti-Israel lawyer to campus as a “Wasserstein Fellow” with a $1,000 honorarium plus travel expenses and an assignment to “counsel students about public service.”

The lawyer, Azadeh Shahshahani, is posting to social media that she is “excited to visit Harvard Law School as a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow!” and inviting Harvard students to “sign up for an advising meeting.” Shortly after I wrote to her and Harvard law school asking about her posts on X, the posts were deleted. But there are screenshots.

Among the lowlights:

Reposting a post from Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine with the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Harvard President Claudine Gay had condemned that phrase, saying, “our community must understand that phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea’ bear specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel and engender both pain and existential fears within our Jewish community. I condemn this phrase and any similarly hurtful phrases.

Reposting a post that said, “stop asking Palestinians for alternatives to Hamas.”

Reposting a post that said, “Zionism must be abolished.”

Reposting a post that said, “Be more anti-Zionist in 2024. Never waver. Boycott Israel. Divest.”

A February 26, 2024, “viewpoint” article that Shahshahani co-wrote for In These Times was headlined “Complicity in Genocide—The Case Against the Biden Administration.”

“By looking at the charges and evidence presented against the Biden administration, a clear picture emerges: The United States is actively aiding a campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza being carried out by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the article said. “the United States government is currently facilitating the annihilation of Gaza and the Palestinian people….now is the time to hold the Biden administration accountable for its complicity in the crime of genocide.”

Shahshahani did not respond to an email from The Editors asking what she would say to Jewish or Israeli students at Harvard who are concerned that she will contribute to an already hostile environment for them.

The associate dean for communications and public affairs, Jeff Neal, who heads Harvard Law’s 14-person communications office staff at a moment when the university has been claiming lack of government funding is threatening life-saving cancer research, did not immediately respond to an email from The Editors asking how and why Shahshahani was awarded the fellowship.

The criteria for the fellowship state that “Three-day Fellow applicants should primarily be focused on US domestic issues and be based in the US.” However, Shahshahani does not appear to be primarily focused on US domestic issues; on July 14, 2025, she published a long article in the Yale Journal of International Law headlined, “The Colonial Order Prevails in Palestine: The Right to Self-Determination from a Third World Approach to International Law.”

The article is riddled with errors, omissions, and tendentious uses of evidence. Among them: