The campaign of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the upcoming U.S. elections, has announced the appointment of Nasreen Barakzai, an Afghan-American attorney, as an advisor on Muslim and Arab community affairs in the campaign.
NBC News reported, citing Harris’s campaign, that Nasreen Barakzai has worked since 2021 until July of this year as a political advisor on issues related to Muslims, Arabs, the Gaza conflict, reproductive rights, voting, and democracy in the office of Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States.
Campaign officials stated that Ms. Barakzai will hold a similar role in Kamala Harris’s election campaign. She has previously worked as an advisor to the Vice President of the United States.
Muslim Americans, particularly Arabs, are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris due to Joe Biden’s policies regarding the Gaza conflict and his government’s strong support for Israel. These communities believe that Kamala Harris will continue Biden’s policies regarding Gaza and Israel.
The primary duty of this Afghan-American advisor in Kamala Harris’s campaign will be to engage and consult with Muslim communities, especially Arab Americans, and to garner their support for Harris’s election campaign.
In a statement from Kamala Harris’s campaign, Ms. Barakzai said: “I am honored to continue my work with the Vice President and will advise on a wide range of important issues in this election, from democracy and reproductive rights to Muslim and Arab affairs.”
Who is Nasreen Barakzai?
According to available information, Nasreen Barakzai was born in 1979 in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.
Ms. Barakzai told Glamour magazine that her father and uncle were captured during that time and went missing. Following this, she and her family migrated to Pakistan to escape the Soviet bombings when she was about two years old.
After living in Pakistan for three years, she immigrated to the United States in 1985 under a refugee resettlement program and graduated from Berkeley Law School in California in 2005.
Before joining the Vice President’s office in 2021 as an advisor to Kamala Harris, she worked as a legal expert and national security attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Nasreen Barakzai has also served as a national security and civil rights attorney at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice organization.
According to a report by Al-Monitor, during her work with this organization, she was responsible for defending student protests supporting Palestine and advocating for them against pressures from pro-Israel Jewish students.
The Jerusalem Post has claimed that Ms. Barakzai referred to Jewish students’ concerns about anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses as “organized legal bullying” in her statements and writings.
In response to complaints from Jewish students against several U.S. universities due to “hostile anti-Israel rhetoric on campus,” she stated that these complaints were attempts to silence pro-Palestinian activism.
The Israeli publication reported that Ms. Barakzai was one of the attorneys who halted investigations by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office regarding complaints of anti-Semitism at three California universities, including Berkeley.
Her biography on the website of Asian Americans Advancing Justice indicates that she has experience working with law firms Boies, Schiller, and Flexner on multi-billion dollar litigation.
This Afghan-American attorney has also worked as a law clerk for William F. Fletcher, a judge on a California appellate court.
Additionally, this advisor to Kamala Harris has teaching experience at Stanford Law School.
