Sahar Aziz

Sahar Aziz serves as Distinguished Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University Law School. She founded the interdisciplinary Center for Security, Race and Rights and maintains faculty affiliation with the African American Studies Department while serving on Rutgers-Newark’s Chancellor's Commission on Diversity and Transformation.

Her academic credentials include a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas, where she was Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review. She completed a clerkship with the Honorable Andre M. Davis on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

Professor Aziz’s research critically examines how national security frameworks perpetuate systemic discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities—particularly Muslim Americans—through counterterrorism policies, surveillance practices, and civil liberties restrictions. Her interdisciplinary approach integrates critical race theory, constitutional law, and Middle Eastern studies to analyze authoritarian trends in both U.S. security apparatuses and regional governance structures.

Her extensive publication record reveals consistent thematic focus on racial profiling in counterterrorism, religious freedom constraints, and democratic backsliding. Key patterns include documenting state-sponsored radicalization mechanisms, analyzing digital surveillance’s racialized impacts, and critiquing authoritarian electoral systems in the Middle East through comparative constitutional lenses.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Derrick A. Bell Award from the Association of American Law Schools (2015)
• Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education (2015)
• Research Making an Impact Award by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (2017)
• Middle Eastern and North African American National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader by New America (2020)
• Soros Equality Fellowship (2021)

Professor Aziz provides strategic guidance through board memberships with ReThink Media, Project on Democracy in the Middle East (POMED), and Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN). Her pre-academic career included litigation at WilmerHale and Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLP, followed by policy advisory work at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

As founding director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights, she leads collaborative research initiatives connecting legal scholars, social scientists, and community advocates to develop evidence-based policy solutions addressing the tension between security imperatives and civil rights protections.