This February 25-26, the Louis D. Brandeis Center hosted its fifth annual National Law Student Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference brought together law student leaders from LDB’s law student chapters across the country, and educated these students on topics including civil rights law; international law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict; how to use legal tools to combat anti-Semitism and the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel; and the constitutionality of anti-BDS legislation, among other topics. Additionally, the students were presented with networking opportunities amongst their peers, attorneys, and legal scholars. The LDB law student chapter initiative, launched in 2014, includes 18 chapters nationwide. LDB chapters fill an important gap in American legal education, offering educational programming that connects students’ legal education to pressing Jewish civil rights issues. The annual conference is an opportunity to bring students together from all over the country, and educate them on pressing issues affecting the Jewish community today. The law students, representing 13 schools including Emory, UCLA, Cornell, Georgetown, George Washington University, UVA and CUNY, were given the opportunity to engage with each other in a continuous dialogue about the issues facing them as aspiring lawyers and proponents of civil rights for the Jewish people, all facilitated within a series of lectures, panels, and roundtable discussions. With several prominent figures in academia, government, and professional law as guest speakers and fellow attendees, law students were also given an opportunity to enhance their knowledge and participate in discussions with multiple legal experts, and scholars of note. After exposure to anti-Semitic incidents on campus, University of St. Thomas law student Stephanie Edmonson stated: “I wanted to understand how and why these incidents occurred the way they did, and what I could do to help address them on my campus. The Louis D. Brandeis Center Conference helped provide the answers to those questions.” The conference’s speakers covered a variety of legal and political topics relating to the Brandeis Center’s mission: empowering student leadership, federal protection of the civil rights of Jewish students, and fighting anti-Semitism so that the culture on American college campuses can change into one where anti-Semitism is taken as seriously as other forms of discrimination. LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus and Chief Operating Officer & Director of Policy Alyza Lewin gave opening remarks, focusing on the importance of the continuing fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses. Marcus highlighted the increase in older forms of anti-Semitism – demonstrated in the renewed visibility of white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies, the continuing danger of the BDS movement, and the spread of anti-Semitism into academic associations. Marcus stated that what this fight needs is a unique combination: individuals with a background in legal training who can work as lawyers while being concerned with civil rights and human rights issues. Marcus highlighted the importance of the law student chapters, their role in responding to local incidents, and their unique ability to network with other chapters to create a unified front against campus anti-Semitism. Lewin discussed the importance of what the students were going to learn over the course of the conference, and the relevance of each session. The speakers included Professor Abraham Bell, of San Diego State University and Bar Ilan University, who specializes in the areas of property, copyright, international law, and economic analysis of law. Bell’s talk, entitled “International Law & The Arab-Israeli Conflict,” focused on Israel and international human rights law. Bell’s talk was a witty, informative, discussion that provided legal and rhetorical strategies for combating anti-Israel canards, while simultaneously disavowing libels frequently levied against the one Jewish state. Bell’s talk ranged from discussions of the legal status of settlements, to the question of what exactly international law is. Bell persuasively argued the fact that Israel is placed at the center of bigotry, and international law is used as a rhetorical tool to mask the anti-Semitic intent of those who do put it there. At the conference dinner, Representative Alan D. Clemmons gave an impassioned speech, discussing his instrumental role in the passage of South Carolina’s 2015 anti-BDS law, what was then the first of its kind. Representative Alan D. Clemmons is a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism and the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. In 2016, Representative Clemmons introduced H.3643, South Carolina’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which, if passed, will continue to demonstrate South Carolina’s leading role in the fight against anti-Semitism. Representative Clemmons spoke of the need for greater clarity and truth in the fight against anti-Semitism, and of the need to unlearn the biases and language associated with the anti-BDS movement. Praising the law students for their choice to fight against bigotry, Representative Clemmons encouraged them to continue on the path they had embarked upon. Hon. Irwin Cotler delivered the keynote dinner address. Cotler, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, longtime Parliamentarian, and recent Founder and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, spoke about the resurgence of anti-Semitism, and what we can do to combat its spread. Cotler differentiated between what he sees as the five different forms of anti-Semitism: genocidal anti-Semitism, demonological anti-Semitism, political anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish terror underpinned by anti-Zionism, and the rebranding of anti-Semitism as supposedly universal values. Cotler spoke of positive legislation being used to fight against anti-Semitism, such as the Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism and the potential widespread adoption of the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism within the United States. Cotler pointed to the need for a United States envoy to monitor anti-Semitism and echoed Representative Clemmons call for a new approach to the language surrounding anti-Semitism, pointing to the ability for pro-Jewish advocates to “leverage the language of intersectionality.” The second day of the conference began with LDB Director of Legal Initiatives Aviva Vogelstein and Civil Rights Legal Fellow Roee Talmor discussing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws that can help protect Jewish students and all students on campus. The discussion included a breakout session which helped to demonstrate the difficult legal nature that surrounds anti-Semitism as long as no uniform, enforceable, definition of anti-Semitism exists for use on campuses. Emory Professor Mark Goldfeder further discussed the fallacy of employing international law as a tool against Israel and the right to Jewish self-determination. Mark Goldfeder is senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law, Spruill Family Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, and director of the Restoring Religious Freedom Project. He is also editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, and has served as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Goldfeder pointed towards the precise nature of legal language and how that affected the appeals to legal statutes. Goldfeder illustrated this by providing the example of the supposedly “disproportionate” nature of Israeli military actions, when the proper (and equally inapplicable) term is “asymmetrical.” Goldfeder further debunked claims of anti-BDS laws infringing upon first amendment guarantees of free speech, using legal precedent and precise readings of the anti-BDS laws, including that government speech is not subject to first amendment arguments in this form. LDB’s Alyza Lewin spoke on “The Status of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital and the Zivotofsky Case.” Lewin, who, along with her father, Nathan Lewin, of the law firm of Lewin & Lewin, argued the noted Zivotofsky case (also known as “The Jerusalem Passport Case”) in front of the United States Supreme Court. The case sought to allow individuals born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their birth country, rather than being forced to just list Jerusalem. Lewin tied her talk to the recent announcement by the Trump administration that the Israeli embassy would be moved to Jerusalem this coming May. The move has renewed discussion revolving around the passport case, and has illustrated the continued importance of pursuing legal means to answer questions of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias. The last event of the conference consisted of a panel of law students from three different law schools discussing their roles as the heads of their respective Brandeis Center legal chapters. The students, Baruch Nutovic of UVA, Jordan Weber of Emory, and Benjamin Wigley of Cornell, answered questions from moderator Aviva Vogelstein, and offered unique advice and solutions to problems faced on US campuses. Fielding questions from students and Vogelstein, the three chapter leaders discussed the leadership qualities that they utilized to organize events, encourage growth of their chapters, and address anti-Semitism and other forms of bias when such hate rears its ugly head on their campuses. LDB President Kenneth Marcus gave closing remarks, highlighting the importance of the work the law students in attendance were doing. Marcus discussed further means of advancing in their goals, as well informing the law students about future opportunities to continue working with the Brandeis Center. After the closing of the conference, law student Nicollete Taber of Loyola University Chicago stated that “I have experienced anti-Semitism on campus, and that situation did not resolve itself in any satisfactory manner. The Louis D. Brandeis Center has provided me with the tools I need to help combat it personally, as well as to advise others when they face anti-Semitism of their own. Mark Landauer, of the University of St. Thomas Law School, added that the “The conference provides a unique opportunity to see a variety of different perspectives due to the diverse nature of the students who attend. We use our diverse backgrounds to bring different viewpoints in our examination of this difficult topic.” Zev Rosenberg of Emory Law School, who has attended the conference for three years in a row, explained that “I had learned a lot during the previous years I had attended, and was always thrilled by the fact that each year the conference felt so different. The conference serves as a gateway for law students to learn more about the Louis D. Brandeis Center, I highly recommend attending it.”