Sahar Aziz

Sahar Aziz's scholarship adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine the intersections of national security, race, and civil rights with a focus on the adverse impact of national security laws and policies on racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the United States. Sahar Aziz is professor of law, Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers Law School. Her research also investigates the relationship between authoritarianism, terrorism, and rule of law in Egypt. She is the founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights (csrr.rutgers.edu). She is also a faculty affiliate of the African-American Studies Department at Rutgers University-Newark and an editor for the Arab Law Quarterly. 

Professor Aziz teaches courses on National Security, Critical Race Theory, Islamophobia, Evidence, Torts, and Middle East Law. Professor Aziz's academic articles have been published in the Harvard National Security Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Nebraska Law Review, George Washington International Law Review, Penn State Law Review, and the Texas Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Journal. Her book The Racial Muslim is forthcoming with Harvard University Press. In 2015, Professor Aziz was named an Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and recipient of the Derrick Bell Award from the American Association of Law Schools Minority Section. In 2017, she was selected as the recipient of the Research Making an Impact Award by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Professor Aziz's commentary has appeared in the New York Times, CNN.com, Carnegie Endowment's Sada Journal, Middle East Institute, Foxnews.com, World Politics Review, Houston Chronicle, Austin Statesmen, The Guardian, and Christian Science Monitor. She is a frequent public speaker and has appeared on CNN, BBC World, PBS, CSPAN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Al Jazeera English. She is an editor of the Race and the Law Profs blog. She also served on the board of the ACLU of Texas and as a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution--Doha.

Prior to joining legal academia, Professor Aziz served as a senior policy advisor for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where she worked on law and policy at the intersection of national security and civil liberties. Professor Aziz began her legal career as a litigation associate for WilmerHale after which she was an associate at Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLP in Washington, D.C., where she litigated Title VII class actions on behalf of plaintiffs. Professor Aziz earned a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East studies from the University of Texas where she was as an associate editor of the Texas Law Review. Professor Aziz clerked for the Honorable Andre M. Davis on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.