The Louis D. Brandeis Center Welcomes Diane Kunz as Scholar-in-Residence

Washington, D.C., October 1, 2021: The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is pleased to announce the inaugural appointment of Diane Kunz to the newly created role of Scholar-in-Residence. Dr. Kunz is a distinguished historian and legal scholar who served as Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University School of Law. The Brandeis Center’s readers will recall that Dr. Kunz has contributed timely and informative postings to the Brandeis Center blog. Indeed, she and her son Edward Kunz, also an historian, are the first mother-son duo to contribute to the Center’s blog; Edward, who was promoted to the position of Senior Communications and Development Intern during his time at LDB, wrote frequently for the Center’s publications. 

Kenneth Marcus comments: “We are thrilled to welcome Diane Kunz to the Brandeis Center as our very first Scholar-in-Residence. Her extensive scholarly experience as an author, historian, lawyer, and legal scholar will strengthen not only the Center’s academic and policy work, but also every facet of our legal practice, as well as our publications.”

Alyza Lewin adds, “LDB’s academic work has always complimented our legal advocacy initiatives. Diane will be a tremendous asset to our scholarly research initiatives and a great resource for our law student chapters and fellows in combatting anti-Semitism on campuses nationwide. I am excited to see LDB’s relationship with Diane deepen through this role.”

Dr. Kunz states: “I am honored to be the Louis D. Brandeis Center’s first Scholar-in-Residence. LDB is at the forefront of fighting the virulent contagion of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism that has permeated every part of American society in ways not seen for seven decades.  In its work, LDB follows the insights of Justice Brandeis, who recognized that ‘the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding,’ and that to protect the civil rights of each citizen is to protect the rights of all citizens.”

About Dr. Diane B. Kunz: 

Dr. Diane B. Kunz, Esq. is Executive Director of the Center for Adoption Policy, a 501 (c) 3 corporation that has become a pre-eminent legal and policy institute engaged in adoption and family creation issues. Dr. Kunz has consulted with government agencies such as the Department of State, the Centers for Disease Control and USCIS.  Partnering with Duke University, New York Law School, and Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, the Center, co-founded by Dr. Kunz and Ann N. Reese in 2001,  has sponsored thirteen legal, academic and policy conferences on adoption and immigration issues. It was honored in 2008 by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute as an Angel in Adoption. She was one of the organizers of the successful effort to bring 1,150 children to the United States, who were in the process of being adopted, from Haiti to the United States in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and a drafter of the Help Haiti Act of 2010 which gave these children a path to U.S. citizenship.

From 1976 to 1983 Dr. Kunz practiced corporate law with the firms of White & Case and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (Harlan Fiske Scholar, Columbia University, 1975-1976, Cornell University, J.D. 1973-1975). 

In 1983, she began graduate studies in diplomatic, economic and legal history at Oxford University (M. Litt. 1986) and Yale University (Ph.D., 1989). From 1988 until 1998 she was Assistant, then Associate Professor of History at Yale University. While at Yale she wrote extensively on twentieth century international history, and U.S. relations with the Middle East, including the prize winning book, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis.   From 1998-2001 she taught history and international relations at Columbia University.  From 2015-2017, she was a consultant to the Academic Engagement Network, whose mission is to counter antisemitism and oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel.

Dr. Kunz served as a Senior Faculty Fellow at Duke Law School from 2017 – 2021. She is an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Adoption and Reproductive Technology Attorneys. Dr. Kunz is working on a transnational history of international adoption which is under contract with UNC Press. She is also the mother of eight children, four of whom were born in China through the non-special needs and waiting children programs.