LDB teamed up with the Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation (SVCAF) on a U.S. Supreme Court brief in support of Asian American students in the Harvard affirmative action case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Together, we showed the Court that an admissions program developed by Harvard a century ago to limit the enrollment of Jewish students is now being used to limit the enrollment of Asian American students. Kenneth L. Marcus followed up the brief with an op-ed on the topic for the New York Sun.

Kenneth L. Marcus Addresses ‘Anti-Semitism in Higher Education’ at AEN National Conference

Kenneth L. Marcus presented at the Academic Engagement Network National Conference May 18 on “Anti-Semitism in Higher Education: Educational and Legal Approaches.” Along with his participation on a Federalist Society panel, ‘Selective Enforcement of Civil Rights Law by the Administrative Agencies,’ the events marked his return to in-person speaking since the start of the pandemic.

Marcus began his AEN speech with remarks about the common factor uniting recent terror attacks in Buffalo, a New York City subway and Colleyville, Texas. The perpetrators of all three attacks were driven by a Jewish conspiracy theory worldview – even when the primary targets were not Jewish, as in Buffalo and New York. And in each case the anti-Semitism involved was downplayed – even when the targets were Jews attacked during synagogue prayer, as in Colleyville.

He expanded upon this idea the following day in a Jewish Journal op-ed:

“Three different races and three different mindsets….Yet their ideas were unified and made murderous by the same central principle: the age-old conspiratorial fantasy that Jews are an all-powerful cabal who are responsible for all the world’s evils…. In all three cases, the antisemitic element has been ignored, downplayed or misunderstood. And yet the failure to grasp this problem has endangered members of all communities.”

Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin was the featured speaker at the Law Day Lecture for the Ohr Kodesh Congregation, a synagogue in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The event marked Lewin’s return to in-person speaking engagements since the start of the pandemic.

A leading voice in the fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses, Lewin addressed the problems being faced by Jewish students, faculty, and staff today and how to use the law to protect members of the Jewish community on campus and beyond.

LDB recently added two other notable Lewin videos to LDB’s revamped YouTube channel – her remarks before a 2019 U.S. Justice Department panel on combating anti-Semitism and the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement’s new #MeetOurPartner video.

The Brandeis Center’s jointly filed legal brief with Hadassah – urging a federal court of appeals to reverse a lower court’s ruling invalidating a Texas law discouraging anti-Israel boycotts – was featured prominently in Jewish Journal’s coverage of the story.

Kenneth L. Marcus told the Journal: “We are arguing that what the state of Texas has done is simply to condition government contracts on an agreement not to engage in discriminatory conduct. It is fairly standard to place conditions on government contracts – including discriminatory provisions – and what we’re saying is there should not be an Israel exception.”

If the appeals court were to side with the lower court, it would “create a terrible precedent,” Marcus stated. “It would create an Israel exception to anti-discrimination law that could be used against Jewish Americans, not just in government contracting but on college campuses, in the workplace and elsewhere.” He added: “The reasoning that the Court uses could be used to deny the notion that BDS is anti-Semitic and that the so-called ‘new anti-Semitism’ is a form of bigotry.”

Marcus followed up the article with an op-ed published in the Washington Times: “Texas is not legally required to subsidize any other form of discrimination. There is no justification for a rule that applies differently to antisemitism than to other forms of hate.”

LDB’s work has traditionally focused on college campuses, but we are increasingly seeing anti-Semitism seep into the corporate world. We addressed workplace anti-Semitism in our Stanford case and an important webinar featuring EEOC Commissioners Andrea Lucas and Keith Sonderling.

Our work has caught the attention of important figures in the human resources community, including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion editor Matt Gonzales of the Society for Human Resource Management. In a new article, Gonzales describes the growing problem of corporate anti-Semitism, and quotes LDB Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus.

New York City regional cable network News 12 completed a months-long investigation into whether U.S. universities are intentionally underreporting campus anti-Semitic incidents. The story includes an interview with Marcus – and statistics from LDB’s 2021 ‘Anti-Semitism @ College’ poll – the first to survey openly Jewish college students.

Kenneth L. Marcus was interviewed for a New York Sun article examining the Title VI monitoring of NYU after years of ignored anti-Semitic incidents. The Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is set to end their monitoring of NYU on May 31, and Marcus argued this would be a poor decision: “The Biden administration can’t close its eyes to what is happening at NYU.” Marcus identified recent emails from NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and other student groups as “massively anti-Semitic” and part of a larger pattern of administrative malpractice whereby NYU “has not been effective in how it has addressed anti-Semitism.”