News Archive

Robert Katz, IU McKinney Professor of Law and John S. Grimes Fellow, has been awarded a $4,000 grant to support his work on a first-of-its-kind casebook and course on antisemitism and the law. The grant was awarded on July 1 by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a nonprofit organization that supports research and education aimed at combating antisemitism.   
 
Professor Katz is developing an upper-level seminar on antisemitism and the law to accompany the casebook that he hopes to teach at IU McKinney and be adopted by law schools across the country. It will build upon Professor Katz’s expertise in law and religion, the First Amendment, anti-discrimination law, and nonprofit and philanthropy law. Professor Katz’s co-author is Professor Diane Klein, Lecturer in Law at Chapman University's Dale E. Fowler School of Law, who specializes in antidiscrimination law, as well as property, wills and trusts, and tax law.
 
The casebook and course are part of Professors Katz and Klein’s project to educate and train law students and newly graduated attorneys to use the law to fight antisemitism on campus and beyond. Professor Katz said that “law school curricula today abound in courses on racism and race discrimination, sexism and sex discrimination, homophobia and LGBTQ discrimination, and discrimination against disabled persons, immigrants, the homeless, and inmates. By contrast, law students cannot study antisemitism and law professors do not teach it because there is no casebook on the subject. Although it is an essential subject to be taught, it is absent from the curriculum. A casebook will provide necessary credibility for the subject, and thus enable interested faculty to teach it.” The casebook and course advance Professors Katz and Klein's larger goal of developing a new subfield of civil rights law that focuses on antisemitism and combating anti-Jewish discrimination.
 
Miriam Elman, AEN Executive Director, states that "with incidents of antisemitism on the rise across the country and a disturbing uptick of anti-Jewish hatred on college and university campuses as well, this research is both timely and critically important. The Academic Engagement Network is pleased to support the work of Professors Katz and Klein and looks forward to sharing it with our wider membership, including the AEN Section for Faculty in Law."
 
Professors Katz and Klein are also working to create opportunities for legal scholars and practicing lawyers to collaborate in developing new legal strategies to combat antisemitism. They are organizing the inaugural Law vs. Antisemitism Conference to be held at IU McKinney on March 13-14, 2022. See the call for papers for the Conference here.