Mamdani appoints lawyer who coached anti-Israel protesters as NYC’s chief counsel |
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday appointed Ramzi Kassem, a prominent lawyer who has supported anti-Israel protest groups, as the city’s next chief counsel.
Kassem has provided legal guidance to anti-Zionist protesters, coached some of the leading activists in the city, and represented the Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil and a terrorist imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
The Office of the Chief Counsel acts as City Hall’s in-house legal team, providing legal guidance to the mayor and other officials on compliance, ethics, legislation and policy. The chief counsel, seen as one of the leading advisory roles in City Hall, also oversees some city agencies.
“I grew up in war-torn countries in the Middle East, authoritarian regimes, and New York City was really my first stable and permanent home, and this is an opportunity for me to repay that debt,” Kassem said at a Tuesday event where Mamdani announced his appointment. Kassem was born in Lebanon and lived in several Middle Eastern countries before moving to the US for college and acquiring citizenship.
Kassem is a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law and the founder of Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR), a legal nonprofit at the law school.
CLEAR aims to represent and advise clients against “government policies and practices deployed under the guise of ‘national security’ and ‘counterterrorism,’” its website says. The group’s services include advice for handling questioning by the NYPD.
Welcome to A New Era, Ramzi Kassem!
Ramzi Kassem joins the administration from the City University of New York School of Law, where he co-founded and now co-directs CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), which has been on the front lines of providing… pic.twitter.com/KmDmYGFTbg
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) December 31, 2025
The nonprofit provides free legal advice to some of the city’s most hardline anti-Zionist activists, such as