Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz spoke at an event for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2019, where he rubbed shoulders with an anti-Semitic scholar behind much of the Hamas propaganda on college campuses in the wake of Oct. 7, according to photos from the event.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, appeared at the "Challenging Islamophobia" conference, hosted by CAIR's Minnesota chapter on March 28, 2019, at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul. Walz gave introductory remarks at the event and announced the formation of a civil rights office to address Islamophobia in the state, which has the largest population of Somali Muslims in the country.
Photos of the conference show Walz posed with Hatem Bazian, an anti-Semitic scholar who has for years defended anti-Israel terrorist activity. Bazian is the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, the group behind many of the pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic rallies across college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. The group's George Washington University chapter projected the slogan "Glory to Our Martyrs" days after the attack. Bazian also founded Students for Justice in Palestine's parent group American Muslims for Palestine, an influential anti-Israel organization under investigation in Virginia for allegedly financing terrorist activity.
Walz's appearance at the event could undercut the image pushed by the Kamala Harris campaign and liberal media outlets of the governor as a folksy Midwestern moderate. He has already faced scrutiny for embellishing his military record and for his handling of violent riots in the wake of the anti-police George Floyd protests in 2020. Harris snubbed Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a popular Jewish Democrat, in favor of Walz—a pick praised by anti-Israel "Squad" members and anti-Israel groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America.
CAIR's and Bazian's views were well known at the time Walz attended the Islamophobia conference.
Federal prosecutors labeled CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator of Hamas in a 2008 terrorism finance case. In 2017, Bazian apologized for posting an anti-Semitic meme of a Jewish man with the caption "Mom look! I is chosen! I can now kill, rape, smuggle organs & steal the land of Palestinians Yay #Ashke-Nazi."
The anti-Semitism watchdog group Canary Mission named Bazian "The Most Dangerous Professor in America" later that year.
Bazian pushed anti-Semitic tropes at a Students for Justice in Palestine rally in 2002, telling the crowd to "look at the type of names on the building around campus—Haas, Zellerbach—and decide who controls this university."
In 2004, he called for the eradication of Israel and said that "it's about time we had an intifada in this country."
Bazian is considered a leading intellectual of "Islamophobia Studies" industry. He formed the Islamophobia Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009, and started the Islamophobia Studies Journal in 2012.
The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to a request for comment.