Touro Talks: Taking Hamas Funders to Court

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[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, Taking Hamas Funders to Court,
November 19, 2024, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera with a plain background. Touro University logo is at the bottom right.

[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish, President, Touro University

[ALAN KADISH] Good evening. I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, President of Touro University, your host for Touro Talks. Tonight, our program is entitled Taking Hamas Funders to Court, and we'll talk about using lawsuits as a tool to try to fight the anti-Semitism and the continued attacks by Hamas and others on Israel since October 7th.

We have two distinguished guests tonight, and I'm glad all of you could join us.

[DESCRIPTION] Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder and Erielle Davidson join. Both speakers have a plain background. The three video displays appear in a grid-like formation.

[ALAN KADISH] The first is Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder. Mark is a scholar in residence and adjunct professor of law at the Touro Law Center.

In addition, he's also the CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center Incorporated, and by presidential appointment, a member of the US Holocaust Museum Council.

He's taught law around the country and currently is teaching a course on anti-Semitism at Touro University. Our other guest tonight, Erielle Davidson, is an attorney at Holtzman Vogel. She focuses her practice on commercial litigation, appellate law, and constitutional law.

Prior to joining the firm, she clerked for the Honorable Steven Menashi on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She's also co-founder of the Center for the Middle East and International Law through the Scalia Law School at George Mason University. So welcome, both of you.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Thank you for having me.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Thank you for having me.

[ALAN KADISH] I'm happy to have you both on. So, as everyone's aware, there's been a surge in anti-Semitism in the United States following the October 7th attacks, with uncomfortable environments on college campuses and in many communities throughout the United States.

In addition, money from a variety of organizations, both abroad and in the United States, continues to flow to Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, prolonging the war, endangering hostages, and increasing the cycle of violence throughout the Middle East.

And of course, there are a number of different approaches that people have taken to try to combat these terrible events, in particular, the descent of areas in the United States into anti-Semitism, that many of us believed would never happen.

One of the tools which is available to combat this racist anti-Semitism is legal methodology, to try to stop and fine or inhibit those organizations that fund Hamas, that support anti-Semitism and that make college students uncomfortable on many college campuses.

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display disappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] So I'm going to begin with a question for Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, which is, tell us a little bit about the advocacy center that you've set up, and what's that all about. Why did you do it and what's its history and participants?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[TEXT] Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq., Scholar-in-Residence, Touro Law Center, CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. First, I want to say thank you. It's a privilege and an honor to be able to participate in this distinguished series. The National Jewish Advocacy Center was started to fill some gaps in the Jewish communal space.

In particular, some of you may be familiar with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA, definition of anti-Semitism, which is one of the most important tools we as a community have when it comes to identifying and dealing with various permutations and manifestations of anti-Jewish hate.

Several years ago, there was a problem with critics pushing back on the adoption of the IHRA definition into state level anti-Semitism bills based on vague concerns about the First Amendment. And so NJAC, the first thing that we did was we wrote the definitive law review article called Defining Anti-Semitism in the Seton Hall Law Review, which laid out a perfectly constitutional model bill for the adoption of the IHRA definition.

The next year, the bill passed in seven states. We went around to all seven states, wrote down every question any legislator ever asked about the bill, published a follow up article called Codifying Anti-Semitism in the Penn State Law Review.

And thank God, since then, the bill or some form of it, has passed or been adopted or embraced in 36 states, plus the District of Columbia. So a supermajority of the United States now uses the IHRA definition. And for the first few years of its existence, that was really NJAC's focus, and things somewhat changed after October 7th.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Tell us a little bit about the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and why you think it's so important, Mark.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. What makes the IHRA definition so important, you have to go back and ask, what makes Judaism so different?

Because Jewish identity is so multifaceted, incorporating aspects of race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, et cetera, it's too easy for anti-Semites to commit horrible acts of anti-Jewish discrimination, then say it wasn't anti-Semitism because it wasn't based on this or that particular characteristic.

In addition, there was a recent study which found that almost half of all adult Americans don't know what the word anti-Semitism means, and that's the ones who are willing to admit that on a survey. And so you can't fight what you can't define.

And the IHRA definition has become the global consensus of what anti-Semitism means and it does this in a very interesting way. There are a number of reasons people give for why they hate Jews, and that changes over the course of time.

In any one moment, Jews can be hated for being too far left or too far right, or too radical, too fundamentalist, too rich, too poor. All the different reasons you can hate a Jew, that's why somebody hates a Jew.

So if you want the kind of definition that can cut through the timely rationales that are given for a timeless hatred, you need one that focuses not exactly on the reasons why people hate, but on how that hate is manifested.

A praxeological or a conduct-based definition, if you will. And that's what the IHRA definition does. It gives 11 concrete examples of how anti-Semitism tends to manifest itself, regardless of the reasons why. And that's why it's become fairly accepted across the vast majority of Jewish people around the world and across the spectrum.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Great. So you mentioned that after October 7th, your organization changed its focus from the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to other things. Tell us a little bit about that.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display disappears. Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. As a community, we were rocked back, as a legal community, as a Jewish community, after October 7th. Nobody thought it would be this bad and that there would be this much hate that was pouring out so incredibly quickly. And we also quickly realized that we needed to use some new tools that had never been tried before.

Because the primary, if you look around the vast majority of the lawsuits that have been filed since October 7th focusing on anti-Semitism, they involve Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI is the part of the Federal Civil Rights Act which makes it illegal for institutions that take federal funding to engage in discrimination based on national origin and ethnicity and race.

The problem is that since 1964, not a single university has actually lost its funding for doing that. And so even though all these lawsuits were being filed, we were afraid that there was no real deterrence being put in place.

And so we started to look for other tools and the National Jewish Advocacy Center led the charge in using the Anti-terrorism Act, the ATA, Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, JASTA, to go after some of these bad actors who are funding Hamas.

In particular, we filed five major federal lawsuits and I'll tell you a little bit about how we came across doing that. Some of you may have seen that on October 7th, National Students for Justice in Palestine, SJP, released a toolkit to all of their different chapters.

This toolkit was among the most anti-Semitic documents I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of anti-Semitic documents. The toolkit said things like, we are not just part of this movement, this movement being Hamas, we are this movement. And it justified everything from rape and murder and torture to anything under the sun.

It was a vile, disgusting, anti-Semitic document, and they sent it to every single chapter with a guide on how exactly to manifest this hate. There were instructions on how to table, instructions on how to organize protests, calls for a day of rage, all kinds of things.

And as I was sitting there reading this, I had made the very bad mistake of becoming active on Twitter right after October 7th, and I was still getting used to this. And one of the things that I did was I wrote a long tweet saying, dear SJP, cosplaying as a terrorist is actually a crime. Section 233.

And I went through it in on Twitter, as one probably doesn't do, exactly what they were doing wrong. Anyway, CNN picked up on that. It went a little bit viral and asked me to do a follow up article, which I did, explaining the theory that what they were doing was acting as the PR agents of Hamas.

And then the state of Florida picked up on that CNN article and said, are you serious? I said, yes. They said, can you do a memo? I did, and the state of Florida defunded all of the SJP chapters across the entire state.

That was incredibly good for us, because it provided a test case to see how other law firms responded, and they got three responses to their shutting down of SJP. The first response came from the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and they said, well, no, this doesn't count as material support for Hamas because there was no money that exchanged hands.

That's just legally wrong. There's a case called holder versus humanitarian law, which said that services count. Next, we got two other responses, one from Palestine Legal and one from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the two law firms that represent SJP.

The first response said, well, these laws are Islamophobic. Well, to me, that's an admission of guilt. And if you want to argue later on that the law is wrong, I'll take the win at the district court and we'll go to the appellate court.

And the last response we got was, you made a mistake. The toolkit was released by National Students for Justice in Palestine, not the local chapters. And that said, fine, reinstate the local chapters, but now you've shown us where we should point our actual lawsuit.

Now, over the course of the few months where this was developing and these responses were coming in, and the state of Florida was dealing with this, we started using the theory in other cases as well.

We sued the Associated Press because they bought photographs from Hamas on October 7th from people who were literally participating in the attack. We sued Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, because they sent $900 million in remittances to bad actors, including Hamas, and they were open about it.

By the time we sued them, they had already been found guilty criminally by the Department of Justice and fined $4.3 billion. And the evidence was overwhelming. We had text messages where employees said, hey, should we really be sending all this money to Hamas?

And they got the joking response, well, it's only $600 at a time. You can barely buy a machine gun. Yes, but when you do it a million times, you can buy tanks.

We sued Palestine Chronicle, which is a 501(c)(3) that was actually paying known Hamas associates to hold hostages in Gaza. We sued UNRWA USA. Everybody wants to sue UNRWA, which is the United Nations Relief Works Agency, basically an arm of Hamas that's been functioning for well over 20 years.

And as an arm of Hamas, the problem is you can't sue them because since they're a branch of the United Nations. They have diplomatic immunity. Well, they made a mistake. They left their 501(c)(3) unprotected in Delaware, and so we sued them there.

We hit them so hard, they actually went dark for a month. And by the time they got back online, they had scrubbed their entire board of directors and their motion to dismiss it. Well, we're just a little charity. We didn't know it was actually happening.

Well, one, the internet is forever. One of those people that they scrubbed from the board was Karen AbuZayd, who was actually the director general of UNRWA in Gaza. And we have video of her pledging allegiance to Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip. So that's how--

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video display disappears. Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[ALAN KADISH] Let's just take a break here for a second. Appreciate your presentation. And I'm going to let Erielle tell us how she ended up getting involved with NJAC.

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yeah, sure. Hi. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. I think these are very timely and important discussions that we're having.

So I currently serve as an associate at Holtzman Vogel. And I had actually become friendly with Mark right in the few weeks after October 7th, and we noticed that there was an opportunity to engage in this type of litigation, namely not just going after universities, which is a very important endeavor in and of itself under Title VI.

And actually, frankly, that's what most of the Jewish nonprofit legal space has been devoted to for the last 20 years, is really in the Title VI space. But to Mark's point, going after primarily charities that are operating under the banner of providing charitable services, but they're obviously acting in an uncharitable fashion, namely by providing material support to terrorist organizations based in Gaza.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display disappears. Erielle Davidson speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[TEXT] Erielle Davidson, Esq. Associate Attorney, Holtzman Vogel

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] And so there was an opportunity here for us to work together and specifically to work with NJAC and to support them in a number of their endeavors. And so our firm and I, myself, work on cases with Mark, in particular, the UNRWA USA case, as well as Palestine Chronicle, as well as NSJP.

And then we're also involved in numerous Title VI actions together. So to speak a little bit about how I ended up in particular working on these types of cases, is prior to going to my law firm, I was working on the Second Circuit for Judge Menashi.

But then during law school, I worked in a variety of roles. I was a policy advisor to Rep. Dan Crenshaw in the House of Representatives. I was a columnist and contributor on the topic of foreign affairs, foreign policy, particularly the US-Iran relationship and the US-Israel relationship.

Contributed to the New York Post, National Interests, the Federalist, National Review. And then, I also worked as a researcher at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America for about a year and a half during law school as well, and their focus is primarily on strengthening the relationship between the IDF and the American military.

I also spent some time in Israel in my What Else summer. I highly recommend it if you have the opportunity to go and spend some time in Israel.

I worked in Israel for about three to four months at a Policy Forum in Jerusalem, as well as Shurat Hadin, which is a civil rights organization law firm that represents victims, mostly of the Second Intifada.

So it was unfortunately, or fortunately, post October 7th. It was a natural fit to work on this type of litigation because I had come from both the foreign policy space as well as the Jewish nonprofit space. And this is something that I felt was deeply personal.

So after October 7th, I can't tell you the number of litigators that reached out to me and said, what can I do? And I say, what firm are you at? And they would say, the firm and it's a bigger law firm and they would be conflicted out.

Or it would be one of those things where the firm may not want to touch it because it's, quote, too political, to which I would always respond, I didn't realize that killing Jews was political. But that was the environment that I think a lot of young attorneys found themselves in post-October 7th.

And, I was very blessed to find myself at a firm like Holtzman Vogel and in particular, to have the opportunity to work with Mark on some of this litigation because, like I said, it's hugely important.

And there is definitely an underserved group of individuals, namely victims of terrorism, who may not necessarily have access to attorneys or may not know how to go about getting access to attorneys, that are then able to go after some of these groups that either enable the terror attacks or engaged in them.

So it's, again, it's important work. And that's a little bit about how my background has been a contributing factor in some of the work I've done for Mark and with Mark.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Very impressive, thank you.

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display disappears. Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] So, Mark, you told us a little bit about the five lawsuits that you've filed against funders of Hamas or supporters of Hamas in one way or another. We talked a little bit about universities, and of course, SJP is active on university campuses.

But you're also suing a number of universities. Is that right? And tell us a little bit about that. What the legal aspects are and the practical aspects are of that.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display disappears. Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. I'll start by giving a little bit of a background about how Title VI works generally. So again, Title VI, part of the Civil Rights Act that says you can't have discrimination on college campuses because they take federal funding.

Now, Title VI protects against race and national origin and other types of discrimination, but not religion. And so from 1964 until 2004, Jews were really not included in the Title VI landscape.

In 2004, under then Assistant Secretary Ken Marcus, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights wrote a clarifying letter which said that actually, to the extent that the discrimination against a Jewish person concerns, race or national origin--

So, for example, a real or perceived connection to the state of Israel, that should be included under Title VI, and they shouldn't lose their protection just because Judaism is also a religion. And really, that idea makes a lot of sense.

The vast majority of anti-Semitism we see has nothing to do with whether someone does or does not light Shabbat candles or put on tefillin in the morning. It has to do with a real or perceived connection to Zionism.

So you think that would solve the problem, but it didn't because, as we mentioned, there's no good definition of anti-Semitism that the Department was able to use as a reference.

And so all the way from 2004 to 2019, very little was done to protect Jews on campuses until President Trump issued Executive Order 13899 on combating anti-Semitism, which said that henceforth, the Department of Education would use the IHRA definition as contextual, rebuttable evidence of intent behind already unlawful conduct.

And that should have solved the problem, but again, it didn't because unfortunately, Title VI has some really loose standards. So at the end of the day, in order for an organization to be found liable under Title VI, their actions have to have been, quote, clearly unreasonable in light of all known circumstances.

What universities have been doing is saying, look, our reaction was pretty bad, really bad, but it wasn't clearly unreasonable in light of known circumstances. There was a lot of chaos.

We didn't know what to do. There were students everywhere. So give us some leeway. And judges have, until very recently, been likely to say yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Thankfully, just a couple of weeks ago, in the Harvard case that Holtzman Vogel was running, the judge actually said, no. Clearly unreasonable has to mean something. But what NJAC has been doing in the meantime is finding new, interesting ways to marry other areas of law into the Title VI standard.

I'll give you an example of what I mean. At Northwestern University, some of you may have seen the dreadful testimony that the Northwestern president gave to Congress, where he basically refused to answer any questions and almost openly sneered at their, again, reasonable interpretations of his actions as being wildly anti-Semitic.

They filed a brief saying that what they did was bad, but not clearly unreasonable in light of all known circumstances. So NJAC filed a brief saying, actually, what you did was worse because one of the things that you did was went down and signed an agreement with the Students for Justice in Palestine,

and you committed the university to tens of thousands of dollars a year in additional scholarships for Palestinian faculty and additional commitments to tuition guarantees for additional Palestinian students. And you never went to the board. You never got approval.

So that entire agreement that you signed was ultra vires and against the law, and therefore, clearly unreasonable in light of known circumstances.

So we're using other areas of law to try and give meaning to the clearly unreasonable standard, to make sure that there are some lines that become clearly unreasonable, even in the most, I would say, even in the most unwilling judge, that they have to see that a line has been crossed.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] So where do these lawsuits stand now, Mark? You mentioned to me that you've filed close to 100 lawsuits or actions. Are any close to a resolution or where does that stand?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Some have been resolved. Some of them have been resolved by the Office of Civil Rights, the Department of Education. Most of these lawsuits, again, take a long time.

So we have filed about 50 Title VII lawsuits. You want to do that, you have to go through the EEOC process, and that takes a while. And then you get 90 days from the end of that process to file your own lawsuit. And then the average lawsuit there can take up to three years.

In our SJP case, we're in what's called a rocket docket in Virginia, which means that it might take us just under a year to get to trial. So the problem is, everyone loves watching these serial TV shows where the lawsuit takes 30 minutes exactly, and you manage to get from start to finish. It doesn't really work like that.

And so most of these lawsuits right now, against universities, are just getting past the motion to dismiss stage and finally getting into maybe a little bit of discovery.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Now, when you say some have been resolved, were those dropped or dismissed, or how is that generally happen in the ones that have been resolved?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] So oftentimes, if the Office of Civil Rights is going to get involved in a case, they'll first offer mediation and the parties have a chance to try and work things out.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] And in general, Erielle and I belong to a class of lawyers, which is very rare, which is that, A, we would like to go out of business in this field and we're not looking to gain more cases, and B, we're not really looking to win necessarily. We're looking to protect these students.

And so at the end of the day, if we have an incredible case and the university knows it and they're willing to do better, we'd rather settle because you can absolutely catch more flies with honey. And you can absolutely do better for these students if universities are enforced by a court to stop being anti-Semitic, but instead work with you.

So a lot of these suits end up settling by some form of an agreement, whether it's mediated by the OCR or directly between the parties. On a couple of occasions, the OCR has come out with a definitive statement saying what happened was wrong, and these are the things you need to do better if you want to keep your federal funding.

And in general, the university agrees because they don't want to lose their federal funding. And so sometimes there are monitoring mechanisms that are put into place to make sure that the agreements are held for a number of years.

But again, most of them are not there yet. Most of the cases that have been filed, and there have been well over 100 filed, not just by us, since October 7th. Most are sitting and waiting for the investigations to begin.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] So what you're suggesting is that the goal of many of these lawsuits is not necessarily to get money, but to try to change behavior. Is that a fair assessment? Tell me a little bit about that.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Yeah, and I'll make it a little bit broader, not just in the Title VI context. So again, the Title VI context, I don't want the university to lose. I'd much rather work with the university and really establish a better environment.

But the same thing is true of the kind of major federal lawsuits that our firms are involved in when it comes to Hamas funders. What we're doing is strategic impact litigation. There's no money involved in suing National Students for Justice in Palestine.

There just isn't. So why do we spend so much time and effort and resources to do it? Because they're really important strategic gains.

I don't know if any of you who are watching have ever walked into one of these encampments or protests, but if you do, you'll notice something fascinating, which is that charitably speaking, maybe 20% of the students involved who are chanting to their heart's content, actually know what river and what sea.

Most of them are there either for the pizza or because they have been genuinely misled into thinking that they are on the right side of history. Now, if we can get a district court to explain to them that actually, you're in bed with an arm of Hamas, maybe that 80% of people walks away, or maybe 50% of them walk away.

What we've just done is saved 50% of our children's classmates. We've saved 50% of our future congressmen and women senators, presidents, leaders, citizens from unfortunately becoming brainwashed.

So there are incredible, in each of our cases, really important strategic impacts that we're looking to get that are worth a lot more than money.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Understood. It's important work. Erielle, you got involved in this. You had a long history of advocacy, a long history of supporting Israel, and got involved with Mark and his organization. What advice would you give to other attorneys who want to get involved?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson's video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display reappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] And before you answer, I know I got cut off before. I don't know if this part came through. I wanted to actually take a moment and just really publicly talk about Erielle's firm, Holtzman Vogel, and Erielle in particular.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Erielle Davidson's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish, Erielle Davidson, and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear in a grid formation.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] When we got involved, we're a small Jewish nonprofit. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Most firms are not brave enough to do what Holtzman Vogel has done, and most associates are not smart enough to do what Erielle personally has done.

They really took a risk on our theories before they had been proven, and by the time we got to our fifth case, to Students for Justice in Palestine, major law firms, including our partners at Greenberg Traurig and the Schoen Law Firm and others had decided to join as well.

But right from the early days, they were brave attorneys like Erielle and Holtzman Vogel, who were willing to really put their reputations on the line. It's important to note that.

[DESCRIPTION] Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display disappears. Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yeah, I think that UNRWA USA was something that even prior to the filing of the lawsuit, Mark and I had been strategizing about because it just seemed like such a simple target in terms of--

Mark mentioned that UNRWA as an international organization, is subject to all sorts of types of protection, namely diplomatic immunity for its leadership, but then also, a type of international organization, immunity that only international organizations enjoy.

And that's actually really what cloaks the UN. But there's some significant debate and actually, Mark and I have both filed amicus briefs to this effect, that there is some debate as to whether UNRWA is operating on its own, independent from the UN.

And that's of a separate conversation. We could have a whole discussion about that. But UNRWA USA, as Mark mentioned, is really an interesting case in which it it's afforded none of the protections that UNRWA may or may not have.

It is the largest private charity to UNRWA in the world. It donates millions and millions of dollars each year to UNRWA and in effect, by donating money to UNRWA, it is effectively paying the salaries of Hamas terrorists, particularly those who took part in October 7th.

I noticed that there was a question in the chat about how do you know which suits to bring or what types of cases to bring.

And Mark made this point, and I'll emphasize it, is that under these anti-terrorism statutes in particular, it has to be a group of victims, and they can be Israeli citizens, but to bring them specifically under the ATA, which is the Anti-Terrorism Act, they do have to be American citizens.

They can be dual, but they do have to be American citizens. So there are certain limitations that we operate within. And if you do decide to bring a case accusing a charity, for instance, of engaging in material support, and you want to bring the case on behalf of Israeli victims, you have to bring it under a separate statute called the Alien Tort Statute.

So, for instance, in many of our cases, we have a combination of plaintiffs. There are some that are dual citizens and then there are some that are just Israeli citizens. And so we have to bring separate claims for our Israeli victims.

So it really will depend on the plaintiff class, what types of claims you bring and what type of case you bring. So in the case of Palestine Chronicle, where we're representing a rescued Israeli hostage, that individual, because he's an Israeli citizen and not American, we are bringing the claim against the 501(c)(3) based in Washington under the Alien Tort Statute.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] So I don't know if that answers a question that's in the chat, but I just--

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yeah.

[ALAN KADISH] So have you found that other attorneys-- Mark mentioned that other law firms have now joined in --have you found that other young attorneys whom or have seen what you've done, Erielle, have joined the effort in other ways? And are you looking to try to get more people involved?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yeah, I think a question that's come up-- so Mark and I have done several of these talks and then we've done them individually as well. And a question that's come up is, why has it taken so long? And why have more Jewish organizations not been involved?

I think it's a pretty loaded question. But in terms of young attorneys getting involved, I'll start there and then I'll answer the one I mentioned before.

Young attorneys can certainly get involved. My biggest sort of piece of advice, if this type of litigation interests you, is to not be afraid to join a smaller firm. And for instance, I knew when was clerking that I wanted to go to a smaller-- our firm is, I would say a conservative boutique, but I knew I wanted to go to a smaller firm.

I knew that I wanted to work on litigation that mattered to me and was important. And I don't necessarily think that everyone needs to feel that attachment to their work output, but I had felt that way from most of the jobs I've had.

And so I knew that I wanted to be at a smaller firm. I wanted to get more hands on experience. I wanted to be in the courtroom. And so going to a small firm, you get that experience right off the bat.

And then especially in NJAC's case, working with Mark, I'm sure Mark will attest to it, you get a lot more hands on experience and a lot more guidance from the partners because it's a flatter organization.

And so whether it's 45 attorneys at Holtzman, or nine at NJAC, it's a situation in which you're going to have just functionally more contact with those who are overseeing your work.

And the other thing I'll say too, is that you're not going to be stuck doing doc review for two to three years. And I will say that big law definitely has its benefits. You get a really good boot camp type training when you go into big law that you may not get at a smaller firm.

You sort of hit the ground running at a smaller firm. But if you have an industrial spirit and you have an independent mind, I think you'd do very well at a boutique firm, or in the case of NJAC, at an impact litigation shop.

So it depends on the type of personality and what you're interested in. But my best advice to folks is, I know that big law is shiny and alluring and the paycheck is quite great, but you can find opportunities if you look for them in places you might not expect. And so that's how I ended up finding Holtzman.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Mark mentioned that yours was a lead firm in the lawsuit against Harvard. Can you just tell us a little bit about that and where it stands now?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yeah, so we're actually working with Weil, so we are working with a bigger law firm on that. And also, we're representing a group of Harvard students who are members of the student organization called JAFE, which is Jewish Americans for Fairness and Education.

It's what we call, in legal jargon, a plaintiff entity. And so, for instance, you can bring lawsuits where the students are not named. And so in this case, the students are not named.

They're part of a plaintiff entity that's overseen by the NGO Brandeis Center. So you may all be familiar with the Brandeis Center. They've been very active in the Title VI space. They're led by Ken Marcus, who is a fierce warrior in the Title VI space, and I think previously served in the Bush administration.

So there is opportunities for students to bring their claims if they don't want to be named. But the best vehicle for doing that, if you want to go into court and file a legal claim, is to do it as a plaintiff entity. So the plaintiff entity is the one that has standing.

So when these students join the plaintiff entity, the plaintiff entity now represents their interests and their stories become the story of the plaintiff entity. So it will say, JAFE member number five or JAFE member number two experienced this.

And this is a vehicle that I think has become, and Mark can speak more to this because he's been practicing longer and has watched this evolution for far more than I have, but there has been, I think, a growth or proliferation of plaintiff entity cases post-October 7th.

Because you do have Jewish students who are genuinely concerned about the fact that if they put their names on a lawsuit, which I completely understand, they don't want their names, to be associated with suing their university if you type their name into Google.

And so the plaintiff entity is a solid vehicle for protecting students, but it doesn't mean that students aren't going to be part of the litigation. So even if a student is a member of a plaintiff entity, they are still going to be deposed by the university.

The University will know their name, but the University likely will be subject to a protective order. So they will not be able to publicize the student's name, and it's really on a need to know basis. People within the administration are not going to need to necessarily know the student's name unless they have to.

So there are a lot of protections in place to help students to guide them through this litigation to ensure that they're comfortable throughout the process. It doesn't mean that students won't withdraw. And I will say that this litigation is a lengthy one.

So think of Students for Fair Admissions, the famous affirmative action case. To this day, we still don't know who those students are, those Asian-Americans that filed that. We know that they were members of Students for Fair Admissions, but we don't know who those members are.

And I think that's a credit to the plaintiff entity system and the structure that the courts have set up, but that went on for nine to 10 years by the time it got to SCOTUS. So the horizon, to Mark's point, of some of this litigation, it can be quite lengthy.

To your question about Harvard. So we actually are in a situation now where the hostile environment claim is the one that has survived, and that is I think, the strongest and most far reaching claim that we had in the complaint, namely, because it enables for the greatest discovery.

So under Title VI, you can make a direct discrimination claim and that can be based off a certain incident that took place. But you can also make a holistic, hostile environment, systemic claim.

And when you make that type of claim, you are essentially saying, give me all the documents that might at all relate to the environment. And so you can imagine that the discovery process for a hostile environment claim is going to be way wider in scope than perhaps a direct discrimination claim.

So we were very pleased to see that of our claims that survived, that was one that survived. And so we are hopefully going to be starting discovery very shortly.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Erielle Davidson's video displays appear side by side.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] But on behalf of our plaintiffs, we took that as a serious win because that judge, in particular, Judge Stearns, in the district court in Massachusetts, is the individual that dismissed the MIT claim. And so allowing this claim against Harvard to survive was quite a big win for us and I think for the students, honestly.

[ALAN KADISH] Yeah, a lot of students at Harvard who felt very uncomfortable so I think the work you're doing there is fantastic. Mark, before we go to the Q&A chat, I just wanted to ask you one or two more questions.

First of all, what else is your organization and NJAC involved in now, apart from these lawsuits? Are there other things you're doing to try to combat anti-Semitism?

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear side by side.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Yeah, one thing that we learned, again, after October 7th, was that we really need to take a close look at what our enemies do well, and what they do well really are two things. Number one, they have great coordination, whereas a lot of Jewish organizations have a hard time working together, unfortunately, something we really need to work on.

They're all doing things together. And so in order to try and work on that aspect, what NJAC did is we built something called the Institute for Litigation Coordination. It's a 16 partner, right now, currently, 16 partner organization system.

And what we have done is we have built a facility using existing technology that's been used to do multidistrict litigation in other areas of law, including mass torts and health care, that monitors every anti-Semitism case around the country.

We have custom built AI tools that summarize all the filings, so that the partner organizations and everyone involved can really get a sense of the landscape of what's happening in a short period of time. And it's incredibly important, because a lot of times, you'll have practitioners of Title VI who we're talking to each other, but they're not talking to the Title VII practitioners or the terrorism practitioners, et cetera.

And it's very possible that the plaintiffs, or the defendants, I should say, in Erielle's case at Harvard, might be some of the same ones that I'm suing in a completely different case. And it would be really good for us, when we're doing our discovery requests, to know about each other's cases, to be able to share expert materials, depositions, et cetera.

So those kind of things are important. And again, we're just starting now, thank God, to develop that kind of baseline coordination. The second thing that our enemies are good at is executing on 20 year plans.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] 20 years ago, they decided that if they had a student organization like SJP, that could really, really help further their goals, and they put the time, effort, and money into it. They also started training young attorneys and now they have better legal teams.

Until this year, there was not a single place in the United States where a young attorney who wanted to come and learn how to become a Jewish legal advocate could go and receive systematic training. Of course, there are fellowships and there are one-off courses, but no place to receive that systematic training.

And so that, Dr. Kadish, with your blessing, that's what we've started to build at Touro University. We have the course, which is leading into the first iteration of what God willing, will become the first anti-Semitism Law Clinic in the United States where students can come and learn.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish's video display reappears. Dr. Kadish and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video displays appear side by side.

[ALAN KADISH] Thank you. So at this point--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER]--we are now officially [INAUDIBLE] advocates.

[ALAN KADISH] That's great. Thank you, Mark. We could probably spend several hours talking about what you've done on a legal standpoint. We do, however, have a bunch of questions from the audience.

[DESCRIPTION] Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video display disappears. Dr. Kadish speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[ALAN KADISH] We have a large audience tonight, and Erielle has sort of addressed one of them, but there are a whole bunch more that are out there.

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display reappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display reappears. Sam Levine's video display appears. Dr. Kadish, Erielle Davidson, Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, and Sam Levine's video displays appear in a grid formation.

[ALAN KADISH] So what I'd like to do at this point, is turn it over to Professor Sam Levine, who's director of the Jewish Law Center at the Touro Law Institute, and knows a lot more about the law than I do because he's an experienced attorney and educator.

So I'm going to let him handle the questions and answers. And I just want to say thank you to both of you. The work you're doing is tremendous. It's tremendously important.

And although we've been lucky at Touro that we haven't had demonstrations here, we see what's going on at campuses and on the streets throughout the country. And really appreciate what both of you are doing.

So at this point, I'm going to wish you a good night and thank you again, and turn it over to Sam to handle some of the questions.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Thank you.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Kadish’s video display disappears. Erielle Davidson's video display disappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display disappears. Sam Levine speaks to the camera with a plain background.

[TEXT] Professor Samuel J. Levine, Director of the Jewish Law Institute and Professor of Law, Touro Law Center

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you, Dr. Kadish, and thank you, Mark and Erielle, for your important work and your powerful presentations. We have received many questions from the vast audience that joined us this evening, and thank you for those questions.

The two of you have implicitly and somewhat directly answered some of the questions, but I'd like to take a few moments to bring up some of the other issues that have been raised.

[DESCRIPTION] Erielle Davidson's video display reappears. Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder’s video display reappears. Sam Levine, Erielle Davidson, and Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder's video displays appear in a grid-like formation.

[SAM LEVINE] Mark, you mentioned your adversaries and some of the arguments that you've seen. We sometimes hear the argument made that these actions and the statements that we see on campuses or we see in public are anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic. Have you heard that response from your adversaries, and how do in turn, respond to those arguments?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. I'll start by saying that not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, but most of it is. And I will tell you that if you're ever not sure, there's a simple test that you can use. It's called the 3D test.

It was developed by Natan Sharansky, and it involves asking just a simple series of questions. There are a number of tools that anti-Semites throughout the country have used to talk about Jewish people. They've used double standards, delegitimization and demonization.

And so if you're dealing with a situation where people are using those same standards, demonization, delegitimization, and double standards to talk about the Jew amongst the states, it's quite likely that what you're seeing is actually anti-Semitism and not just plain political anti-Zionism.

[SAM LEVINE] It's a very strong response. A number of questions have built on the discussions of universities. And of course, we at Touro Talks had a number of programs, webinars last year, and many of tonight's viewers participated in watching the students and the professors describe what was going on and continues to go on at the universities.

So some of the questions addressed your point about defunding the universities. And Erielle, you mentioned your work regarding Harvard. Does either of you find it plausible that there actually will be a defunding of some of these universities?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] In a word, yes.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Yes, I think so. With the new Department of Education, absolutely. And I think we also may see their endowments begin to be taxed.

And I also think, to Mark's point, he said that there hasn't been a university that's had their funding pulled on the basis of Title VI violations. I think that's going to change in a very rapid fashion. I'll let Mark answer as well, but, yes.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Yeah, look, I'll tell you something that I told the Senate when I testified there a few weeks ago, which is that when we filed those five federal lawsuits using the ATA, we shouldn't have had to file a single one. The government should have done it.

Unfortunately, there has been very little governmental appetite to bring any of these suits and to use any of the vast number of tools that actually do exist. Title XI is just one of them, but I'm hopeful and confident that whoever is the incoming Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights will actually finally use the tools at their disposal to make at least one university pay, literally.

And when that happens, I think you will see an absolute shift in the way that universities approach Title VI, and the way that universities approach discrimination against all kinds of students, not just Jewish students.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] And I'm going to add to Mark's point about the ATA. So even Title VI should be something that should be investigated by the Department of Education. Title VI violation should be investigated by the Department of Education.

Should be something that DOJ would be interested in examining, in this particular instance, with regards to the ATA or the Anti-Terrorism Act. There is a federal criminal statute that criminalizes the provision of material support. It's 18 USC 2339b.

It's not being enforced. It's not being enforced whatsoever. There hasn't been a single charge brought against anyone for providing material support to Hamas under 2339b since October 7th, under this DOJ.

So it's fallen on the shoulders of folks like Mark and I to bring these cases on behalf of victims from October 7th to ensure that these charities, and I use that term very loosely, that these organizations that are funneling either financial support or providing material support, or in the case of Binance, providing services to a terrorist organization, that they're held to account.

And so I am hopeful that with regards to anti-terrorism litigation, you have the Title VI strand and then you have the anti-terrorism component, I am confident and I am hopeful, I should say, cautiously optimistic, that will change shortly.

But as of right now, we've seen very little action with regards to anti-terrorism. And frankly, under both Bush and Obama, it was a completely different story when it came to targeting actors under the ATA, or at least sanctioning individuals, I should say, because JASTA itself was not really added until 2016.

[SAM LEVINE] And you've both alluded to the incoming administration and changes that you anticipate. There's been talk, of course, among the incoming administration of eliminating the Department of Education. So some viewers have wondered how that might impact your work moving forward.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Short answer is that even if the Department of Education was transformed in some way, it would take many, many years to do, up to 10 years to really make that kind of a change. And it wouldn't go away. It would be folded into other parts of the government.

So, for example, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title VI, would simply be folded into the Department of Justice itself. And so the same laws would still apply, the same regulations would still apply, they would just be handled and enforced a little differently.

[SAM LEVINE] You've both described the strategy you've used, the legal strategy you've used in bringing these cases. And Mark, you used the term honey as being sometimes more effective. Can you give us some examples of when honey has been an effective legal strategy for you?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. I represent 24 Hillels, and a number of times, what happens on a campus is that there's terrible acts of anti-Semitism, and the Hillel is caught in between. They're part of the university to a certain extent, but they're also representative of the Jewish community.

And there's got to be a way for them to be able to represent their students without also forfeiting the long term relationships that they've spent decades building, and that they need to have tomorrow. A lawyer comes in and they sue and they win. They get to walk away.

But Hillel still has to be there the next day dealing with the administration they just fought with. And so sometimes, you have to do as a good cop, bad cop strategy, where you have a lawyer threatening a suit or actually bringing a suit, and Hillel stepping in, being the quote, mediating factor, between the two sides.

That's an example where a little bit of honey go into both sides and go, what can we do to make this work together, has in many instances actually brought about better long term change that's also more lasting because it's not forced down their throat.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] I would also add to Mark's answer by saying that, and Mark will attest to this as well, there may be instances where you find that you start down the administrative path, i.e. you file a Title VI complaint with the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education, and you decide not to go the litigation route.

And you discover through that process and through conversations with the school that things are actually a lot worse and a lot more dysfunctional than you anticipated. And it may be the case that you talk to your clients and your clients say, you know what? We would prefer to go the litigation route.

But in that instance, there may be times where you engage in dialogue with the school or you engage in conversation, and you do use honey. And using honey may be a stepping stone to finding more information about what's going on. And you may not like what you find out.

Mark can probably attest to that. There have been instances where we find out more than we anticipated and we're disgusted and we're thinking, this is hugely problematic, and maybe we do need to go into federal court with this. Maybe this is not something that necessarily OCR is equipped to handle.

And so another sort of hurdle that we've encountered in doing this litigation is that OCR is backlogged right now. They've got-- Mark, how many cases right now does OCR-- investigations I should say, does OCR currently have teed up? I wonder how many complaints have been filed.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Hundreds.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Hundreds. And the vast majority of them have not been processed yet. So when we think about avenues for students, and to Mark's point, using honey, it's great to do that in the litigation context.

And again, if you decide to go the administrative route, you may find that you don't want to wait that long, ot that, you know what? This deserves its day in court.

[SAM LEVINE] Mark, you mentioned that in your experience, many of the students in the encampments, I think you described, as being ignorant of what they're talking about, if not knowing what river, what sea, if not having the background, having the information that they're basing their actions allegedly on.

It seems that education is one of the most effective means to combating anti-Semitism on campuses and beyond. And of course, you've mentioned the course that you've introduced at Touro Law Center.

Do you anticipate that other universities might offer, and might that be again, an alternatively, maybe more effective way of combating anti-Semitism rather than lawsuits? And perhaps, have you suggested or argued that introducing these type of courses or educating students be one of the remedies that you would require universities to be involved in in responding to what's been going on in the campuses?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. Education is incredibly important. I will tell you that we are in talks with seven other universities about doing similar courses and hopefully externships and clinics as well. And so, yes, Touro is really leading in this front, but I'm hoping that this becomes a franchise model so that more people can take advantage of these kinds of opportunities.

Unfortunately, by the time you get to law school, it's too late. So I do believe that education is incredibly important, but it has to start earlier.

And so one of the reasons why NJAC started with the state level anti-Semitism bills was because we want to get that kind of education done even earlier, so that all kinds of DEI training and mandatory staff training or student training includes elements of anti-Semitism training, but what it is and how it manifests and how to recognize it.

By the time you get to the university, you're already well trained in this. It's important to work through local religious groups as well. So we've gone to a number of churches and done trainings.

It's important to work through all different avenues to make sure that the people that are listened to, whether it's teachers or pastors, et cetera, have a really firm grasp of it before it gets to the university setting.

[SAM LEVINE] Do you have any thoughts on whether you've identified or how to respond to foreign funding of some of these student organizations?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Look, there's studies, the international-- ISGAP. I'm trying to remember what it stands for. There's a group run by Charles Small called ISGAP, which has done an incredible job tracing $13 billion in funding that has come undetected from Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes.

And it turns out that at those universities that have accepted this funding, there's a 300% increase in the likelihood of anti-Semitic incidents, which by the way, also spills over into-- it's the Institute For the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy. That's what it was.

The 300% increase on campus spills over into statistics for statewide and countywide at least, but also statewide hate crime statistics. So there's clearly a correlation between the funding that is flowing in and what it leads to.

And so yes, there are a number of methods to try and stop that. One of them is the Deterrence Act, which is pending in Congress right now. And essentially, what that does is it lowers the threshold for reporting from 250,000 to 50,000. And it will be much harder for universities to try and hide that.

There's also, as Erielle had mentioned, talks about using the tax code to try and tax dollar for dollar, the kind of money that's coming in from endowments that haven't previously been taxed, to make sure the universities don't feel that they can just take this money unfettered.

[SAM LEVINE] But we are approaching--

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] They need to do a better job of reporting their gifts. So ISGAP captures the degree to which there is this money that is just gone, that has sort of disappeared from the records, in the sense that the schools are not reporting the amount of gifts that they're receiving from foreign regimes.

So that's also a huge problem as well. And so I think increasing congressional oversight of these universities, in terms of their reporting requirements, would be a huge plus.

[SAM LEVINE] Terrific. And we are approaching the end of the hour. So I did want to make sure to ask a question that a number of our viewers have been asking. What can they do?

Whether they are lawyers who would like to help with your work, whether they'd like to donate to yours or other organizations doing this work. And how do you find your relationship with those organizations and the broader Jewish and broader community in the advocacy that you're doing?

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Sure. A lot of parts to that question. Yes, you can absolutely get involved with the National Jewish Advocacy Center, JewishAdvocacyCenter.org. And we'll also make our contact information available.

Mark@JewishAdvocacyCenter.org. Feel free to reach out. We have a network of hundreds of volunteer attorneys. We can always use local counsel in all the different states that we file.

And we definitely appreciate any support, whether it's in terms of additional funding. Everything that we do is immediately scalable and we're always looking to try and help more people or in terms of volunteers, who are willing to help us out on in that kind of work.

Whatever kind of lawyer you are, there are ways to get involved. I'll give you an example. We are doing a case now where we've been tracking ghost ships in the Iranian ghost fleet, and now we're working with Maritime lawyers. Maritime lawyers usually don't get to handle anti-Semitism cases, but now they do.

When you think outside the box, there are always ways that you can get involved. And again, we're always looking for those kinds of interesting and innovative lawyers who are willing to take the kind of creative approaches that we are promoting.

We work with all kinds of Jewish organizations. And again, it's important to realize that there are different niches in this field. It is worth having the kind of traditional, large organizations that have a seat at the table and are a little bit more conservative in their approach.

And it's also worth having bomb throwers, like NJAC and Holtzman Vogel, that are willing to try and push the law. None of the lawsuits that we have brought are frivolous in any sense of the word.

Some of them might lose because they are absolutely pushing the boundaries and trying to find new protections. But some of them, God willing, hopefully all of them, will win and we will establish new ground and break new ground in terms of the kind of frontiers for protecting Jewish students.

So it's a balance. We work well with everybody. It's a small enough sandbox. Everyone needs to play nicely and we do. But again, we're always hopeful that even more people will join our partnership organizations and that we can have even better coordination across all those different spectrums.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you. And Erielle, any final thoughts?

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] No, I think Mark covered it beautifully. And to his point, someone asked a question in there about working with other Jewish organizations. We work with a variety of Jewish organizations and we're happy to. We don't discriminate.

If there's an instance in which we can work with ADL or ZOA or whoever, we'll do it. We're happy to help.

And I think that that's one of the things that is absolutely necessary post October 7th, when it comes to addressing the needs of both victims of terrorism, as well as Jewish students, is now isn't the time for infighting. It's time for girding our loins and getting ready to fight some of these battles.

[SAM LEVINE] Thank you. And once again, thank both of you for your participation in tonight's program. Thank you, Dr. Kadish. Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg and produced by Nachum Twersky and myself, Sam Levine.

Thank you all for joining us in the Touro Talks conversation this evening. Have a good night.

[ERIELLE DAVIDSON] Thank you.

[RABBI DR. MARK GOLDFEDER] Thank you.

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[TEXT] TOURO TALKS, TOURO UNIVERSITY, touro.edu/tourotalks

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