This Rutgers Professor Is Under Fire For Being An Ex-Syrian Diplomat Who Accused Israel of Child Organ Trafficking

A Rutgers professor is being criticized for his role as a Syrian diplomat who once accused Israel of trafficking child organs.

Mazen Adi, who has taught international criminal law and political science at Rutgers since 2015, served as Syria’s foreign ministry from August 1998 to July 2014 and as the country’s diplomat in the last seven years of that tenure. Adi frequently defended Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the United Nations while criticizing Israel in the United Nations.

One of accusations Adi leveled at Israel was that “international gangs led by some Israeli officials are now trafficking children’s organs,” an accusation that Israel has denounced as “blood libel.” Adi also alleged “that Israel systematically targeted civilians, destroyed the environment and buried alive enemy soldiers,” according to the Algemeiner.

UN Watch has issued a petition calling for Adi to be fired.

“UN Watch calls on Rutgers University to fire Mazen Adi, a professor on war crimes law, on grounds that as a Syrian diplomat and legal advisor he justified the war crimes of the genocidal Assad regime,” the petition stated. “While serving as a Syrian delegate and legal advisor at the UN, Mr. Adi systematically acted as an apologist for the mass murder committed by the Assad regime against his own people, helping Syria win impunity at the UN to conduct continued war crimes.”

As of this writing, the petition has received over 4,000 signatures.

Rutgers defended their employment of Adi on the grounds of academic freedom.

“Faculty members enjoy the same freedoms of speech and expression as any other individual in this country,” the university said in a statement to Algemeiner. “Rutgers will not defend the content of every opinion expressed by every member of our academic community, but the University will defend their rights to academic freedom and to speak freely.”

Algemeiner asked Rutgers if the fact that they received donations from an Iranian-linked charity played any role in their decision, which Rutgers denied.