The Case for the Law and Antisemitism Conference

Jewish life in the United States is evolving, and so too are the legal questions surrounding Jewish identity, peoplehood, and civil rights.

For decades, antisemitism and other forms of Jew hatred were widely regarded as fringe social pathologies. Today, antisemitism and antizionism have moved from the margins into the mainstream. In recent years, these phenomena have increasingly surfaced across academic, legal, and institutional contexts.

The othering and exclusion of Jews have become normalized across trusted American institutions— from education and media to courts and legislative bodies.

• Elementary school students are taught that Jewish self-determination is a form of oppression.
• Major newspapers are complicit in spreading antizionist libels.
• Judges dismiss claims that antizionism can constitute discrimination against Jews.
• Academic journals refuse to publish scholars affiliated with Israeli institutions.
• An organization with reported ties to Hezbollah works with local prosecutors to initiate war crimes proceedings against Israeli soldiers.
• International law is weaponized against Israel.
• Hecklers silence Jewish speakers.
• Universities offer courses that teach antizionist libel as fact.
• Litigants forced the recusal of a judge because he participated in a mission trip to Israel.

This contemporary reality did not emerge overnight.

For decades, anti-Jewish narratives spread quietly and strategically across trusted institutions — education, media, government, and law. In the aftermath of October 7, that gradual normalization erupted into open expression with Jews increasingly targeted, rendering visible what had long been developing (mostly) beneath the surface.

The legal implications of this shift are profound.

Claims of discrimination against Jews are being litigated under Title VI, debated within university governance structures, raised in employment disputes and union activity, argued in international human rights forums, contested in online platform regulation, and even implicated in international sports. Issues of statutory interpretation, constitutional doctrine, and institutional liability have become central to these disputes and to questions concerning the IHRA definition, antizionism as a discriminatory ideology, and the boundaries of protected speech.

These are not merely political debates. They are doctrinal questions. They require careful legal analysis.

Advocacy organizations and litigation teams are performing critical and sophisticated work defending Jewish civil rights through research, litigation, policy, and educational initiatives. Litigators and professors have published important scholarship examining antisemitism, antizionism, Jewish peoplehood, and Jewish civil rights.

What is needed now is sustained intellectual infrastructure: a coherent and collaborative field of Jewish Legal Studies capable of integrating litigation experience, historical understanding, doctrinal analysis, and comparative research into a durable body of scholarship.

That is why the Law and Antisemitism Conference is so important.

Hosted by Cardozo Law School, the conference will bring together scholars, litigators, policy experts, and social scientists dedicated to confronting antisemitism through careful legal analysis, historical accuracy, and intellectual integrity. Presenters will examine antisemitism and antizionism through constitutional, statutory, comparative, interdisciplinary, intersectional, and international legal frameworks. By showcasing cutting-edge research and developing new theoretical and doctrinal approaches, the conference elevates scholarship that confronts antisemitism, antizionism, and other forms of Jew hatred.

I am proud and honored to chair this gathering.

Panels will explore the application of Title VI to campus harassment; alternative litigation strategies beyond the Civil Rights Act of 1964; institutional antisemitism and governance failures; the treatment of Israel in international law and human rights bodies; the tension between freedom of speech and anti-discrimination law; digital radicalization; Holocaust restitution and memory law; teaching antisemitism and law; and emerging doctrinal challenges in both domestic and international courts.

The conference includes breakout sessions designed to foster substantive discussion among presenters and audience members alike, on forward-looking strategies in scholarship, policy, and litigation.

The conference will also advance new initiatives — including the Center for Jewish Legal Studies — dedicated to establishing and developing Jewish Legal Studies as a sustained field of inquiry through strategic scholarship, collaborative networks, education, and Israel engagement. The aim is not simply to respond to crisis, but to cultivate intellectual rigor, historical accuracy, and principled civil rights reasoning across the legal academy.

Legal scholars bear particular responsibility in moments such as this.

The Law and Antisemitism Conference is an investment in scholarly rigor, collaborative inquiry, and the development of coherent legal frameworks capable of addressing one of the most persistent and evolving forms of discrimination and sources of hate-fueled violence. It is a commitment by scholars to replace false narratives with intellectual honesty, rhetoric with rigor, and polarization with principled analysis.

If you are interested in joining us, please register for the conference.

At a moment when antisemitism is testing institutions across the country and around the world, serious, Jewish identity–centered legal scholarship is not optional.

It is essential.