After an annual conference on combating antisemitism in law featured speakers affiliated with anti-Zionist organizations last week, the Anti-Defamation League, one of the event’s sponsors, announced a policy shift on Wednesday. 

The antisemitism watchdog’s future participation and sponsorship in the conference “will be contingent on our ability to exclude such extraordinarily inappropriate speakers,” the group told Jewish Insider. 

The fourth annual Law vs. Antisemitism conference, which was held this year at UCLA for two days beginning on March 23, included University of Toronto law professor Mohammed Fadel; Thomas Harvey, a civil rights lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine; and Ben Lorber, a former campus coordinator for Jewish Voice for Peace. Attendees told JI that several of the speakers used the event to promote anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric — including a panel where Fadel “defined Zionism as an ideology of Jewish ethnic supremacy.” 

When JI originally reported on the event on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the ADL declined to weigh in on any of the controversial speakers, instead noting that the group was “pleased to co-sponsor the conference and to support bringing legal academics and representatives of Jewish organizations together to discuss these issues.” 

“The organizers deserve credit for productively calling attention to ways in which the legal system can help address antisemitism,” the ADL said. 

But the following day the ADL — which did not have a role in selecting speakers — suggested there will be a change of course going forward in its sponsorship of the event, which it has helped fund since the inaugural conference in 2021. 

“It’s deeply troubling that the organizers of this conference invited a former JVP coordinator and other problematic speakers without consulting us,” the ADL said. “JVP is despicable and too far outside the mainstream to be a credible participant. Our future sponsorship and participation in an otherwise important conference will be contingent on our ability to exclude such extraordinarily inappropriate speakers.”

Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which works to combat antisemitism within universities and also sponsored the conference, told JI earlier this week that had she been aware of the lineup, “I would have pulled our funding.”  

“I’m all in favor of dialogue and debate,” Elman said. But she believes that the selection of speakers “crossed a red line.” 

Other Jewish sponsors of the event — UCLA Hillel, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law (which is slated to host next year’s conference) — did not respond to requests for comment from JI about the speaker selection.