Georgetown University law school’s Student Bar Association passed a resolution this week condemning a Jewish attorney on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) team and accusing her of Islamophobia after she appeared on campus to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood and her work representing victims of terrorism. 

Erielle Azerrad has served as Cruz’s deputy chief counsel since December and has been heavily involved in the Texas senator’s recent efforts to target the Brotherhood. Prior to joining Cruz’s office, Azerrad — who attended Georgetown Law — co-founded the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where she remains a senior fellow. She also served at the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

Azerrad was hosted by Georgetown Law’s Conservative and Libertarian Student Association (CALSA) on Tuesday for an event titled, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Network in America and Legal Strategies for Confronting It.” 

During the hour-long summit, Azerrad delivered a lecture detailing the Muslim Brotherhood’s origins and how the group had expanded its operations in the U.S., according to a transcript of the event reviewed by Jewish Insider. Azerrad also noted the Muslim Students Association’s ties to the Brotherhood, though she disputed that such ties meant all Muslim students, or even all MSA members, were connected to the terrorist group. 

“The Muslim Association of America was founded by Brotherhood folks who were upset with the direction of the Muslim Student Association in the United States and thought it had veered too far from Brotherhood principles,” Azerrad said at the event. “Until I see a single MSA chapter come forward and say: ‘We disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,’ I am inclined to believe they are still tied to their foundings. That’s my opinion.”

“I can only presume to answer that the organization itself is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. I can’t speak to individuals that attend meetings,” she continued. “I do know for a fact that the Muslim Brotherhood embeds itself in the education centers of countries. That’s what it does. It recruits young people and it hopes to shape their minds, and then receives them after they graduate from college. So, I won’t presume to know every single individual who attends an MSA event, what their political leanings are.”

After the resolution condemning Azerrad was passed on Wednesday night, the SBA posted a photo of the document on Instagram. The caption alongside the photo describes it as a “Resolution In Solidarity With The Muslim Law Student Association of Georgetown Law.”

According to the post, the resolution, which does not name Azerrad outright, alleges that, “a speaker was brought to campus who, while here, promoted Islamophobic beliefs and conspiracy theories.” It also claims, without pointing to examples, that the speaker “has a well-documented record of false, bigoted, and harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric” and that “hosting such a speaker endangers Muslim students, undermines their belonging, and erodes their trust in the University.”

The resolution states that, “The Student Bar Association requests the Georgetown Law administration clarify their understanding of what was going to be discussed at an event or at a minimum reiterate the hate speech policy.”

Cruz quickly came to Azerrad’s defense after the SBA posted the resolution publicly.

“These woke children expect indoctrination rather than actual education. Their hysterical declaration contains no facts,” Cruz wrote on X. “Here are the actual facts: The Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. Egypt, Saudi Arabia & the UAE have all banned, designated, or imposed restrictions on the Muslim Brotherhood for terrorism.”

“Calling evidence ‘hate speech,’ trying to censor it, and trying to cancel opponents doesn’t change facts,” he added. “And on that note, my staff and I are not going to apologize for educating people about those facts. If Georgetown were doing its job — instead of sucking up Qatari money — it would be too.”

Delegates in support of the resolution claimed before the vote at SBA’s weekly meeting on Wednesday night, which was sparsely attended, that attendees had been “heckled, intimidated and made to feel unsafe” at CALSA’s event with Azerrad, according to a source who attended the meeting and the event. 

The source said that opponents of the resolution pushed back on accusations that attendees were harassed at the gathering and argued that those behind the resolution had not yet provided sufficient evidence that Azerrad had made any anti-Muslim statements during the CALSA event. They also offered to provide a transcript to their fellow SBA delegates to review before voting and attempted to force consideration on a motion to postpone a vote on the resolution until Thursday to establish a factual record, which was overwhelmingly rejected. 

Reached for comment, Georgetown Law SBA President Eyram Gbeddy told JI that the resolution was brought forward in response to three issues. 

“At the event, (1) claims were made that MSAs (Muslim Student Associations) were part of a larger terrorist scheme, (2) outright lies were told about a prominent American Muslim who has repeatedly disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, and (3) a Muslim student who attended was mocked and ridiculed by those ideologically aligned with the speaker,” Gbeddy said. 

During her speech, Azerrad repeatedly accused Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of having “very strong ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood and pushed back on El-Sayed’s assertions that he is not affiliated with the group.

Gbeddy told JI that the resolution was taken up at Wednesday’s meeting “due to timing concerns.” 

“The decision was made that a rapid resolution was better than delaying and leaving MLSA in limbo as to whether they had the support of the SBA in their time of need. Especially considering the evidence we had in the room, including a personal apology from a member of the organization that held the event in the first place,” he said. “I am still in close contact with the leadership of all student organizations implicated, and I am more than open to receiving a transcript of the event.”

Gbeddy emphasized that he was speaking to JI in his personal capacity, and that his comments were not made on behalf of Georgetown Law or SBA.

Arielle Vertsman, a fourth-year student at Georgetown Law and a SBA delegate who opposed the resolution, described the situation as “a clear example of speech and an individual being censored and punished merely because some students deemed it to be offensive” and expressed concern that future events could be jeopardized if students are allowed to use institutional bodies to malign invited speakers as Islamophobic or bigoted. 

“Free inquiry and open discourse should be the bedrock of any serious intellectual institution,” Vertsman told JI. “Yet Georgetown seems to be sending a very different message: that certain viewpoints are not merely unwelcome, but grounds for censorship, condemnation, and punishment.”

“It is a repudiation of the very values that a law school exists to teach and defend: intellectual freedom, procedural fairness, and the rule of law itself,” she continued. “An institution entrusted with educating future guardians of these principles should be their fiercest defender, not a participant in their erosion. It is profoundly disillusioning, and it forces me to question not only Georgetown’s commitment to these ideals, but what the institution truly stands for.”

In the days leading up to the event, a flyer was distributed on campus highlighting five of Azerrad’s posts and one repost on X from the last two years. 

The retweet was of a post stating that, “The entire history of Islam is violent colonization, slavery, sexual slavery and conquest.” Other tweets include one mocking what she described as “Third Worlders” walking out of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent address at the United Nations; another describing the Palestinian cause as a “death cult;” and a post from last September celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah.

Ahead of Tuesday’s event, the Georgetown Muslim Law Students Association (MLSA) posted an open letter to social media on Monday evening stating that the group was “deeply saddened and concerned” by Georgetown University’s decision to allow CALSA to host Azerrad. 

The letter accused her of having “a well-documented record of false, bigoted, and harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric” and warned that “hosting such a speaker endangers Muslim students, undermines our belonging, and erodes our trust in the University.”

“It is shocking that the University would break the trust it has built with Muslim students by welcoming a speaker who labels Muslim Students Associations as terrorist organizations,” the letter stated. 

The group also claimed that “the institutional decision to endorse” Azerrad being hosted on campus “collapses the distinction between free speech and hate speech,” and called on university administrators to “adopt a more rigorous process for vetting the speakers it invites to campus. We also ask that the University reevaluate its policies on speech and expression to prevent harmful, hateful rhetoric toward minority groups at campus events.”

Georgetown Law did not respond to JI’s request for comment.

In May, a Jewish university leader withdrew as Georgetown Law’s commencement speaker in response to backlash from anti-Israel student activists, and was replaced with a professor who criticized congressional hearings on campus antisemitism as a form of “McCarthyism” aimed at chilling free speech. In February of last year, the Georgetown Law Students for Justice in Palestine planned to host a convicted member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, on campus, though the university ultimately postponed the event to “conduct a thorough investigation into serious safety and security concerns.”