On Wednesday, March 28, Mitch Webber will address students at Emory University School of Law on the topic of defining bias. Mr. Webber is a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, where he focuses on securities fraud, antitrust, complex commercial disputes, internal investigations, and white-collar criminal matters. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, Mr. Webber clerked for the Hon. Mark L. Wolf in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. He has represented clients in numerous class and individual actions in federal and state courts and in arbitration. He also is experienced in governmental investigations pertaining to various subject areas, including allegations of corruption, fraud, insider trading, and accounting irregularities, and has developed expertise in Jewish related civil rights matters, especially with respect to the BDS Movement, and campus anti- Semitism.

Wednesday, March 21, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

On Wednesday, March 21, Gabriel Groisman – a lawyer, writer, speaker, and the Mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida – will address the LDB chapter at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.   Mayor Groisman wrote and passed the nation’s first municipal anti-BDS ordinance as well as the nation’s first codification of a uniform definition of anti-Semitism.  His anti-BDS ordinance prohibits the municipality from contracting with any business that is engaged in the BDS movement. Mayor Groisman’s anti-BDS ordinance is currently spreading to cities across the country. In 2016, Ambassador Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, invited Mayor Groisman to speak at two conferences hosted at the UN to discuss his efforts in fighting the BDS movement.  Mayor Groisman’s groundbreaking anti-Semitism  ordinance is utilized to help law enforcement investigate hate crimes against Jews, and is beginning to make its way across the nation as well.  Mayor Groisman also publishes op-ed pieces regularly on different platforms, including The Algemeiner, The Huffington Post and The Times of Israel and had been a guest on various television and radio programs, aiming to keep issues affecting the Jewish and pro-Israel community in the forefront of the national conversation. Gabriel Groisman is also an attorney with his own firm, Groisman, PLLC where he represents a diverse set of clients in international commercial affairs.

On Tuesday, March 20, Professor Oren Gross will address the LDB chapter at Loyola Chicago School of Law on the Legality of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capitol. Prof. Gross, the Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of international law and national security law. He is also an expert on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professor Gross holds an LL.B. degree magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University, where he served on the editorial board of the Tel Aviv University Law Review. He obtained LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School while a Fulbright Scholar. Professor Gross was a member of the faculty of the Tel Aviv University Law School in Israel from 1996 to 2002. He has taught and held visiting positions at Harvard Law School (where he held the position of Nomura Visiting Professor of International Financial Systems in 2012-13); Princeton University; Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; the Max Planck Institute for International Law and Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany; the Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast (while a British Academy visiting professor); Queen’s University in Belfast; the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain); and Brandeis University. Professor Gross has received numerous academic awards and scholarships, including a Fulbright scholarship and British Academy and British Council awards.

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Washington, D.C., March 20, 2018 – A United States federal judge has ruled that the professors who are suing the American Studies Association (ASA) for its boycott of Israeli universities and academic institutions may file an amended complaint that substantially expands their case.

The amended complaint adds new claims based on evidence revealed during discovery.  It alleges that the defendants deliberately limited nominations for the ASA National Council to pro-boycott candidates, strategically hid their pro-boycott agendas when they stood for office, withheld pertinent information about the boycott resolution from voting members, and froze membership rolls prior to the vote to prevent those opposed from voting.

The amended complaint also adds several new defendants to the case, including John Stephens, the Executive Director of the ASA, Jasbir Puar, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, and Steven Salaita, all of whom were heavily involved in the underhanded effort to adopt the boycott.  Not coincidentally, Puar, Kauanui, and Salaita are also all leaders of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and members of the USACBI Advisory Committee or Organizing Collective.  Other defendants include Lisa Duggan, Curtis Marez, Neferti Tadiar, Sunaina Maira and Chandan Reddy. The amended complaint also adds new claims for breach of fiduciary duties, breach of contract, and ultra vires activity.

This ruling follows the professors’ success in partially defeating the American Studies Association’s Motion to Dismiss in April 2017, which moved the case forward to discovery.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2016 by American Studies professors who are current and former ASA members.  After numerous unsuccessful attempts to internally address the corrupt practices they witnessed at the time of the vote, the professors decided to enlist the help of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which assembled a team of lawyers and legal scholars to represent them. According to the plaintiffs, the boycott adopted by ASA in 2013 was a concerted effort by a small number of BDS activists who used their leadership positions in ASA to make anti-Israel activism the central focus of the Association, subverting the mission of an academic association and manipulating the vote in violation of the law. The lawsuit reveals the defendants attempted to prevent informed discourse and withheld pertinent materials opposing the resolution, including one signed by 70 ASA members and another from eight former ASA presidents.

During discovery, emails were unearthed that provided additional proof of the corruption that occurred. The emails, some of which are quoted in the amended complaint, exposed a covert and premeditated plot by USACBI leaders to pack ASA leadership with USACBI advocates who would ensure that the ASA would adopt the USACBI boycott, essentially hijacking the ASA and its resources for their own purposes.   For example, an email from Maira explicitly states that “Jasbir [Puar] is nominating me and Alex Lubin for the Council and she suggests populating it with as many supporters as possible.”  A second email from Puar states, “I think we should prepare for the longer-term struggle by populating elected positions with as [many BDS] supporters as possible.”  A third email, this time from Lubin, states, “In my conversations with Jasbir it’s clear that the intent of her nominations was to bring more people who do work in, and are politically committed to . . . the question of Palestine . . . we were nominated in order to build momentum for BDS[.]”  (Second Amended Complaint at p. 21.)

In addition, the emails detail a deliberate scheme by certain defendants to hide their boycott positions until after they were elected.  For example, an email from Maira states, “I feel it might be more strategic not to present ourselves as a pro-boycott slate.  We need to get on the Council and I think our larger goal is support for the resolution[.]”  Another USACBI leader, David Lloyd, replied, “I would definitely suggest not specifying BDS, but emphasizing support for academic freedom, etc.”  (Second Amended Complaint at pp. 23-24.) Numerous other emails unveil this secret strategy, and that year, two of the defendants, Sunaina Maira and J. Kehaulani Kauanui, ran for the ASA National Council without disclosing their intentions.  Yet the great majority of their efforts, once elected, was dedicated to the adoption of the USACBI boycott.

Also, of critical importance to all current and former members of the ASA, the new complaint also alleges that the defendants have invaded the ASA’s trust fund – for the first time since at least 2002 – in order to pay expenses largely arising from or related to the resolution, as well as decreases in revenue related to the subsequent decline of the ASA’s reputation and good will.  The complaint quotes an internal email that states that the ASA leadership withdrew $294,000 from the trust fund over the past years, largely to cover expenses incurred in advancing the BDS agenda.  The complaint further alleges that the ASA rushed through a change in the corporate bylaws to allow for these withdrawals.  Previously, the ASA’s bylaws forbade any withdrawal from the capital of the trust.  (See Second Amended Complaint at pp. 57-61.)

In addition to granting the plaintiffs’ request to file the amended complaint, the Court instructed the parties to brief the question whether plaintiffs meet the threshold amount required to proceed in federal court.  The parties have 30 days to provide this supplemental briefing.

This latest decision by the federal court is a significant step forward for everyone who is concerned about the anti-Semitic BDS movement, its deleterious impact on academic institutions and the unlawful practices of those attempting to undermine the pillars of higher education to advance a personal, political agenda.

The case, Bronner et al v. Duggan et al (Case 1:16-cv-00740), is before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.  Judge Rudolph Contreras is presiding over the case.

On Monday, March 19, civil rights attorney Joel H. Siegal, a member of the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s Legal Advisory Board, will speak to the LDB chapter at the University of Viriginia School of Law, about Title XI &Title IV cases. Mr. Siegal is founder of the Law Offices of Joel H. Siegal, where he practices litigation. For more than 25 years, he has represented people who don’t always have the resources to take on the big, powerful institutions of our society: big corporations, insurance companies and governments. His expertise include the law of harassment, discrimination, personal injury and fraud.

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Washington, D.C., March 14, 2018: The Miami-Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police have unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism when investigating crimes. This important resolution follows the Village of Bal Harbour, Florida – a municipality within the county – becoming the first government body in the country to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism into their laws, for which the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) had testified in its support. LDB (www.brandeiscenter.com) is a national, non-profit civil rights organization committed to combating anti-Semitism.

“The Miami-Dade Police Chiefs’ resolution marks an important ”next step” following Bal Harbour’s adoption of the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism in in December. These steps taken in Florida should serve as a model for community leaders throughout the country who seek to curb d the current resurgence of anti-Semitism,” stated LDB’s COO & Director of Policy, Alyza Lewin.

“Such resolutions are necessary as anti-Semitism continues to rise, on and off college campuses. Various studies are finding anti-Semitic incidents on the rise.  In 2015, LDB and Trinity College issued a joint report finding that over 50% of self-identified Jewish college and university students had witnessed or experienced anti-Semitism on campus. (link: http://brandeiscenter.com//home4/klmarcus/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/trinity-Anti-Semitism.pdf) In February, the Anti-Defamation League released their “2017 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents,” (link: https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents#major-findings) demonstrating a jarring 57% increase in anti-Semitic incidents overall from 2016 to 2017, and an 89% increase specifically on college campuses. Our hope is that additional Police Associations will follow the lead of Miami-Dade County, and that additional municipalities will follow the lead of Bal Harbour,” continued Lewin. “Resolutions defining anti-Semitism properly in order to effectively combat it are necessary now more than ever before.”

In December, Bal Harbour unanimously passed an Anti-Semitism Definition Ordinance, to provide Bal Harbour’s law enforcement officials with a uniform definition of anti-Semitism. In her testimony in support of the bill, LDB’S Director of Legal Initiatives Aviva Vogelstein explained how law enforcement is central to the project of defining anti-Semitism, and how such concerns were crucial to the initial efforts to develop a definition of anti-Semitism. Many recent efforts to define anti-Semitism have also focused on law enforcement: for example, in 2017 the European Commission added the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism – a definition that is substantially the same to that of the U.S. Department of State – to its website, referring to it as a “useful tool for civil society, law enforcement authorities and education facilities to effectively recognise and fight all forms of anti-Semitism,” and the European Parliament approved a Resolution calling on EU member states and institutions to adopt and apply the definition to support law enforcement “in their efforts to identify and prosecute anti-Semitic attacks more efficiently and effectively. . . .”

Uniform definitions are especially important for anti-Semitism, because so much confusion surrounds the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of the State of Israel. The State Department has stated that, “it is especially important to define anti-Semitism clearly to more effectively combat it.” (See U.S. Department of State, Special Envoy to Monitor & Combat Anti-Semitism Ira Forman, “Combating Global Anti-Semitism in 2016,” Berlin, Germany, March 2016.) And this is exactly what both the Bal Harbour ordinance and the Miami-Dade resolution seek to achieve.

Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman – who led his municipality in passing its resolution defining anti-Semitism as a tool for law enforcement in December – stated on Friday: “I applaud the Miami-Dade County Chiefs of Police Association for standing against anti-Semitism and passing this historic resolution.  The use of a uniform definition of anti-Semitism protects the interests of our citizens by providing our law enforcement officers a critical tool needed to ascertain the intent of persons who engage in unlawful activities, such as assault or vandalism.”

Mayor Groisman continued: “Particular thanks is due to South Carolina Representative Alan Clemmons, and leading subject matter experts Joseph Sabag from Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), and Kenneth Marcus from the Louis D. Brandeis Center (LDB), for lending their expertise and policy resources in support.”

President of the Miami-Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police, Captain Raleigh Flowers, stated, “The Miami Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police supports initiatives and laws that protects the rights of all individuals in Miami Dade County.  The Anti-Semitism ordinance enacted by Bal Harbour and other municipalities in Miami Dade provides a guide for law enforcement officers to use when responding investigating and potential Anti-Semitic offenses.  Bal Harbour Mayor Groisman spoke to the police leaders of Miami Dade County and without hesitation, the association unanimously agreed to prepare a resolution encouraging all Miami Dade law enforcement agencies to consider the Anti-Semitism definition by the Department of State and establish protocols for each agency to follow when investigating and combating anti-Semitic and Hate Crimes.”

The Miami-Dade resolution states, “be it resolved that the Miami-Dade Chiefs of Police Encourages all Police agencies to establish specific protocols to be followed for those investigations surrounding potential anti-Semitic motivations for criminal offenses.”

Similar efforts to combat anti-Semitism have been underway federally and in the states, and such other government bodies are expected to follow the good example of those in South Florida. South Carolina is expected to become the first state to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism into its laws.

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ABOUT THE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS CENTER
The Louis D. Brandeis Center, Inc., or LDB, is an independent, nonprofit organization established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all. The Brandeis Center conducts research, education and advocacy to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses. It is not affiliated with the Massachusetts University, the Kentucky law school, nor any of the other institutions that share the name and honor the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

On Wednesday, March 14, the Cardozo LDB chapter along with the Jewish Law Students Association will host the Lawfare Project’s founder and executive director Brooke Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer & Director of Research Benjamin Ryberg, and Director of Legal Affairs Amanda Berman, to speak on the topic of “Litigating to Uphold the Rights of the Jewish People.” The Lawfare Project is a nonprofit legal think tank based in New York City that mobilizes public officials, media, jurists and legal experts to counter the international lawfare phenomenon: the abuse of the law as a weapon of war against Western democracy.

By Paul Miller
Daily Wire

By unanimous decision, the Miami-Dade County (FL) Association of Chiefs of Police passed a resolution recognizing the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism when investigating crimes.

This decision is in response to statistics recently released by the FBI revealing that of the 1,584 victims of religious hate crimes, over half the incidents were motivated by anti-Semitism. These figures, based on incidents during 2016, indicate a growing pattern, a fact supported by the Anti-Defamation League’s “2017 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents” that showed a 57% increase in anti-Jewish activity from the previous year.

Adopting the State Department’s anti-Semitism definition is not new to Miami-Dade County.

Last December, Bal Harbour, Florida became the first municipality in the country to implement an ordinance that provides law enforcement with a definition of anti-Semitism, enabling them to investigate such incidents as hate crimes.

“The Miami-Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police supports initiatives and laws that protect the rights of all individuals in Miami-Dade County,” stated the association’s president, Captain Raleigh Flowers. “The Anti-Semitism ordinance enacted by Bal Harbour and other municipalities in Miami-Dade provides a guide for law enforcement officers to use when investigating any potential anti-Semitic offenses.”

Flowers added that when Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman spoke to the police leaders of Miami-Dade County, “the association, without hesitation, unanimously agreed to prepare a resolution encouraging all Miami-Dade law enforcement agencies to consider the anti-Semitism definition by the Department of State and establish protocols for each agency to follow when investigating and combating anti-Semitic and hate crimes.”

Although the resolution is not mandatory, it “encourages all police agencies to consider potential anti-Semitic motivation for criminal offenses in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its Jewish community.”

“I applaud the Miami-Dade County Chiefs of Police Association for standing against anti-Semitism and passing this historic resolution,” said Groisman. “The use of a uniform definition of anti-Semitism protects the interests of our citizens by providing our law enforcement officers a critical tool needed to ascertain the intent of persons who engage in unlawful activities, such as assault or vandalism.”

Groisman expressed gratitude to South Carolina Representative Alan Clemmons, Joseph Sabag of the Israel Allies Foundation, and Kenneth Marcus of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for “lending their expertise and policy resources in support.”

Clemmons is credited with writing the nation’s first anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) legislation that prohibits the state of South Carolina from contracting with any business that singles out Israel for boycott. Marcus is the Trump administration’s nominee for assistant secretary of education for civil rights.

Case Western Reserve University School of Law
On Thursday, March 8, Professor Alexander Tsesis will speak to the newest LDB law student chapter at Case Western Reserve University School of Law on the topic of, “Campus Speech and the First Amendment.” Tsesis, a professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, is an expert in Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, Civil Procedure, as well as civil rights issues and constitutional interpretation. He is a widely published author whose articles have appeared in a variety of law reviews across the country. as well as a frequent presenter to law school faculties nationwide on issues involving constitutional law, free speech, and civil rights.
 Harvard Law School
On Wednesday, March 7, Northwestern Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich will speak to LDB students at Harvard Law. Professor Kontorovich’s research spans the fields of constitutional law, international law, and law and economics. He is also one of the world’s preeminent experts on international law and the Israel-Arab conflict, having written and lectured extensively about the legal aspects of it. His scholarship has been relied on in important foreign relations cases in the federal courts, and historic piracy cases in the U.S. and abroad.