Join Us! LDB’s Summer Speaker Series Continues with Professor Lesley Klaff and Dr. Mark Goldfeder ~ Wednesday, July 7 at 12 pm ET

The Louis D. Brandies Center invites you to join us this Summer for a series of virtual conversations with thought-provoking educators, scholars and legal minds.


 

Our Summer Speaker Series concludes with a discussion on “The Legal Battle Against Campus Anti-Semitism” featuring LDB attorneys, Kenneth L. Marcus, Alyza D. Lewin and Denise Katz-Prober.

Alyza D. Lewin.                 Kenneth L. Marcus

Wednesday, September 1 at 7 pm Eastern. In case

 

 you missed it, you can watch our webinar here:

Watch the September 1 webinar

 

                                                                  

 

Denise Katz-Prober                                                                           


  • Wednesday, July 7th at Noon Eastern:  “Law and Jewish Identity” with Professor Lesley Klaff and Dr. Mark Goldfeder

Lesley Klaff

Lesley Klaff is a senior lecturer in law at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, Professor [Affiliate] at the University of Haifa, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism  She serves on the advisory board of the Louis D Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law and does pro bono work for UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a charitable organisation that uses the law to oppose attempts to delegitimize and attack Israel and its supporters.  She has published on a range of issues relating to contemporary antisemitism and her most recent article, “Why the 2010 Equality Act does not make the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism redundant,” was published in Fathom Journal in February 2021. She has recently served as an expert witness on the topic of antisemitism in a disciplinary case before the General Teaching Council of Scotland and is currently acting as an expert witness for the International Legal Forum (ILF) in a case before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

She is currently working on a collaborative project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, on ‘Intersectionality, Misogyny and Online Hate,’ and in 2018 she was named in The Algemeiner’s 5th Annual “J100” List as one of the top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life.

 

Dr. Mark Goldfeder

Dr. Mark Goldfeder is Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. He has served as the founding Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, a Trustee of the Center for Israel Education, and as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Goldfeder has taught law around the country and the world as Senior Lecturer at Emory University School of Law, Spruill Family Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Director of the Restoring Religious Freedom Project, and as a visiting professor at Georgia State University School of Law, Florida Southern College, University of Padua (Italy), Scuola Galileana (Italy), IDC’s Radzyner Law School (Israel) and Bar Ilan Law School (Israel).

Goldfeder has taught law classes and legal clinics, ran externship programs, and given CLE courses on anti-Semitism and BDS across the country and at the United Nations. Among other initiatives, some of which are classified, he has represented the President of the United States, advised the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations; presented to the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in Jerusalem; worked with local, state, and federal legislators on measures to fight anti-Semitism; and defended students, professors, businesses, and nonprofits that were targeted for their support of the Jewish State.

 


Professor Oren Gross

Watch the June 23, 2021 Webinar Here

 

Professor Gross is the Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of international law and national security law

Professor Gross holds an LL.B. degree magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University, and LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School. He has held visiting positions in numerous leading institutions such as Harvard Law School and Princeton University.

Professor Gross has received numerous academic awards and scholarships, including a Fulbright scholarship and British Academy and British Council awards.

Professor Gross’s work has been published extensively. His articles appeared in leading academic journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Yale Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of International Law, Texas International Law Journal, Minnesota Law Review, Florida Law ReviewCornell Law Review and others. His book, Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice, co-authored with Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006 and was awarded the prestigious Certificate of Merit for Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship by the American Society of International Law in 2007. He also co-edited, with Professor Ní Aoláin, the volume, Guantanamo and Beyond: Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative Perspective, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.

In 2017, Professor Gross was awarded the Stanley V. Kinyon Tenured Faculty of the Year Award, University of Minnesota Law School.

Professor Gross practiced law both in Israel and in New York (where he practiced with Sullivan & Cromwell). In 2008 he joined the American Law Institute as an elected member.

Between 1986 and 1991, Professor Gross served as a senior legal advisory officer in the international law branch of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Judge Advocate General’s Corps. In 1998, he served as the legal adviser to an Israeli delegation that negotiated an agreement with the Palestinian Authority’s senior officials concerning the economic component of a permanent status agreement between Israel and Palestine.

 


Attorney Mark Rotenberg

Watch the June 9, 2021 Webinar Here

Attorney Mark Rotenberg is Vice President of University Initiatives & Legal Affairs at Hillel International.

Mark oversees Hillel’s Campus Climate Initiative, working across the U.S. with Hillel professionals and higher education leaders to ensure a campus environment in which every student can feel comfortable learning about and identifying with Judaism and Israel. He also oversees the Israel Fellows Program and the Building Israel Connections Engagement Project (BICEP). Mark has spent most of his professional career on university campuses, serving for many years as the general counsel at the University of Minnesota and at Johns Hopkins University. In those positions, he provided strategic counsel and policy advi

ce to university boards, presidents, chancellors and other senior officers. A seasoned university educator, Mark currently is an Adjunct Professor of Law at American University in Washington, has taught at the University of Minnesota for over 20 years, and was a visiting professor of law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Mark was a partner at Dorsey & Whitney law firm in Minneapolis and special counsel at WilmerHale in Washington, focusing on higher education issues including free speech, campus protests and academic boycotts. He has argued and won cases in the US Supreme Court and many other judicial foru

ms. Mark has long been passionately engaged with the Jewish and pro-Israel communities, serving in leadership roles for AIPAC, Camp Ramah, Jewish day schools and synagogues, and has lived in and visited Israel on numerous occasions. Mark received his B.A. from Brandeis University, and J.D., M.Phil., and M.A. from Columbia Law School and Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

 


On Wednesday, May 19, 2021, Professors Anne Bayefsky and Abraham (Avi) Bell presented “The Current Crisis, Gaza, Hamas and Durban IV” 

Watch the webinar video here!

Avi Bell is among the world’s leading scholars of international law, economic analysis of law, property, and intellectual property. A Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and at Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law, Bell also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum and as Dean of the summer program Law, Governance and the Foundations of Democracy in International Perspective, hosted by the Israel Law and Liberty Forum.

Prof. Bell is deeply involved in public service and diplomacy, assisting various non-profit organizations with training, legal advice, and strategic direction, and he has consulted with and given testimony to officials and committees of parliaments, governments and international organizations on six continents. Recently, Prof. Bell represented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in proceedings before Israel’s Attorney General regarding issues of freedom of speech and the criminal law. Prof. Bell is the outgoing president of the Israel Law and Economics Association, he sits on the Board of Directors of NGO Monitor, and he has served in a voluntary capacity on the boards of, or in executive roles for Corridori Atlantici (Atlantic Corridors), CAMERA/Presspectiva, and Stand With Us.

Prof. Bell received his B.A. and J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago, and his doctorate from Harvard University, where he researched the economics of eminent domain law. During his studies, he was awarded a number of prizes and fellowships, including an Olin Law and Economics Fellowship and a Fulbright grant for legal studies in Israel. Prior to entering academia, Prof. Bell clerked for Justice Mishael Cheshin of the Supreme Court of Israel, and he practiced law for the administrative law department of Israel’s State’s Attorney and for an Israeli commission on the legal rights of persons with disabilities. He also worked for the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag and the New York firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

 

 

Anne Bayefsky is an international human rights lawyer and the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, as well as the President of Human Rights Voices. She represented the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists at the 2001 UN Durban conference, and has served on Canadian and NGO delegations to UN bodies in New York, Geneva, and elsewhere. She is the author or editor of 11 books in the field of human rights.

 

 


On May 12, 2021, Professor Alexander Tsesis spoke on “American Incitement Law and the Long Memory of Hatred.” Alexander Tsesis is the Raymond & Mary Simon Chair in Constitutional Law and Professor of Law at the Loyola University in Chicago.

Tsesis’s most recent book is Free Speech in the Balance (Cambridge University Press 2020). His previous books include: Constitutional Ethos: Liberal Equality for the Common Good (Oxford University Press 2017) and For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence (Oxford University Press 2012). His previous books include We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law (Yale University Press 2008), The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (New York University Press 2004), and Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paved the Way for Harmful Social Movements (New York University Press 2002). He also edited a collection of essays in Promises of Liberty (Columbia University Press 2010). The subjects of his articles range from cyber speech, constitutional interpretation, civil rights law, and human rights. They have appeared in a variety of law reviews across the country, including the Boston University Law ReviewColumbia Law ReviewCornell Law ReviewMinnesota Law ReviewNorthwestern University Law ReviewSouthern California Law ReviewUniversity of Illinois Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Tsesis’s scholarship focuses on a breadth of subjects, including constitutional law, civil rights, constitutional reconstruction, interpretive methodology, free speech theory, and legal history.

 


Attorney Nathan Lewin was LDB’s first speaker featured on April 21st. Watch Mr. Lewin’s “Where is the Supreme Court Headed on Religious Liberty?” webinar here!

Nathan Lewin is a cofounder and partner in Lewin & Lewin, LLP, where he engages in trial and appellate litigation in federal and state courts. Mr. Lewin has been listed in Best Lawyers in America since its first editions and was included in “Washington’s Best 75 Lawyers” in the April 2002 Washingtonian magazine. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Georgetown, and George Washington universities. Mr. Lewin has served as president of the American Section of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and as President of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.