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More than 50 legal academics, practicing lawyers, activists, historians, political scientists, and Jewish community leaders will come together for the inaugural Law vs. Antisemitism Conference on March 14-15 at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

View Event Agenda and Register to Attend

Panels and presentations will address issues ranging from the treatment of Jews and antisemitism in the legal profession, hate speech laws, religion and state, civil rights law, Holocaust reparations litigation, zoning laws visual representations of Jewish identity and critical race theory. Selected papers from the Conference will be published in the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality, which is co-sponsoring the event.

Robert Katz, professor of law and John S. Grimes Fellow at IU McKinney School of Law, and Diane Klein, visiting professor of law at Southern University Law Center, are convening the inaugural event. They are co-founders of the Law vs. Antisemitism Project to promote legal research and education on the relationship between law and antisemitism.

“Antisemitism is seemingly eternal,” Professor Katz says. “It is both the world’s oldest hatred and freshest news. Yet Antisemitism is more than a hatred and a practice; it is a legal phenomenon.”

Recent events make the conference especially timely. In January, news headlines included a hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and an attempt to ban the Holocaust-themed graphic novel Maus from schools in Tennessee. Last November, far-right organizers of a deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, were tried in federal court and found liable for damages.

“Right now, we are seeing legal institutions and law enforcement being used to combat antisemitism, to defend Jewish victims and organizations from antisemitic violence and discrimination and to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Professor Klein says.

“We are also seeing, right now, law and public officials perpetuating ignorance about the Holocaust and antisemitism,” she says. “These events are in the headlines now, and they all stand at the intersection of antisemitism and the law.”

Yet there are no courses, no casebooks, and no sustained academic attention to the interaction of the law and Jews and Judaism in America in a law school setting. There are many Jewish studies departments around the country that study antisemitism from a wide range of perspectives—social, cultural, religious, and political—but nothing comparable exists in the law school setting, according to professors Katz and Klein.

Additionally, American law schools offer no courses on antisemitism and the law, nor do they train future lawyers how to recognize antisemitism and use law to combat it, the professors say.

Professors Katz and Klein founded Law vs. Antisemitism Project to remedy the legal academy’s failure to address the legal aspects of antisemitism. They are writing a casebook titled Jews, Antisemitism, and the Law, which they hope will be adopted in law schools nationwide for teaching an upper-division elective course on this subject, or to supplement other courses.

“This is the gap we are aiming to fill,” Katz says.

Law vs. Antisemitism Conference Speakers

• Harvard University Professor Derek Penslar will deliver the opening address, “What is antisemitism? Comparing the IHRA, Nexus, and Jerusalem Declaration Definitions.”
• The Hon. Randall Shepard, former chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, will discuss how state law and constitutions can be used to fight antisemitism.
• Two leading historians of the Jewish experience, Professor James Loeffler of the University of Virginia and Professor Lila Corwin Berman of Temple University, will provide context to the recent federal civil trial arising from the deadly "Unite the Right" rally and other intersections of law, antisemitism, and American history.
• A panel discussion on “Fighting Antisemitism: The View from Indiana and the Midwest” includes speakers Miriam Dant, board president of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council; Rabbi Brett Krichiver of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation; former FBI Special Agent Grant Mendenhall, community security director for the Indianapolis Jewish Community Center; Dr. Dennis Sasso, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth-El Zedeck; and Trent Spoolstra, associate regional director of Jewish Community Engagement & Young Leadership Development, Anti-Defamation League Midwest.
• A panel discussion on “Post-Holocaust Litigation and Reparations” will include Richard Shevitz, partner at Cohen & Malad, discussing Holocaust reparations claims he has litigated.

The conference will feature more than a dozen other panels and presentations, including historical perspectives on Jews and the legal profession, international boycotts of Israel, hate speech and its regulation under the First Amendment, visual representations of Jewish identity and critical race theory (CRT), Jews and antisemitism.

Sponsors include the Indiana State Bar Association, the Indianapolis Bar Association, the IUPUI Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and the IUPUI Jewish Faculty and Staff Council. and the Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality. Additional support is provided by Cohen & Malad LLP, Hoover Hull Turner LLP, Ice Miller LLP, the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council, Katz Korin Cunningham PC, Kosene & Kosene Development Co., Mitchell Dick McNelis LLC, and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN). Breakfast and lunch donated by Bagel Fair and Shapiro's Delicatessen.

Registration is required for this event.