A Jewish legal group will convene its inaugural conference on antisemitism and civil rights law at Harvard University on Thursday, an event that was born out of last year’s settlement of a Title VI lawsuit against the school and framed around the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States.

“We’re very excited to have a mix of federal, high-level leadership, prominent scholars, Jewish communal leaders, high-powered litigators and experts in the field,” Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the group hosting the conference, told Jewish Insider.  

The day-long event is slated to open with an address from Marcus and benediction from Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad. 

Held as America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary this summer, Marcus said the headline session will focus “on how we define antisemitism as lawyers and professionals, and why a proper definition of antisemitism matters for America at this point in time.” The panelists will include Andrea Martin, co-chair of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies; Nathan Diament, executive director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center; Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs for Combat Antisemitism Movement; and Julie Paris, Mid-Atlantic regional director of StandWithUs.

The plenary session, “Towards a Jewish Civil Rights Movement,” moderated by Marcus, will feature William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Elan Carr, CEO of Israeli-American Council and former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism; and Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network. 

A separate panel, moderated by Anat Alon-Beck, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, will explore new avenues for litigation against antisemitism.

Attendees are expected to include Harvard community members, Jewish activists, lawyers and scholars, according to Marcus, who served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights in President Donald Trump’s first administration. 

In January 2025, the Brandeis Center settled its lawsuit with Harvard, which alleged that since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, students and faculty on campus called for violence against Jews and celebrated Hamas’ terrorism as the university ignored harassment — including a physical assault — of Jewish students. 

Under the terms of the resolution, Harvard agreed to host Brandeis Center events, implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, invest additional academic resources to study antisemitism and establish another partnership with a university in Israel, in addition to programs the university currently has in place with Israeli universities.

The conference comes as Harvard remains entrenched in legal battles with the Trump administration, which it has sued to recover billions in funding that was frozen over the government’s allegations that the school has not adequately addressed antisemitism. A federal judge ruled last September that the government violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights and federal law when it froze nearly $2 billion in federal grants. The Trump administration filed an appeal in December 2025, which is ongoing. 

Last month, the clash escalated when the Trump administration filed a new lawsuit against the university, claiming that its leadership violated the civil rights of Jewish students by failing to address ongoing antisemitism that has roiled the campus since Oct. 7. 

The conference is also held against the backdrop of a newly released report by Harvard’s official Jewish alumni group finding that Jewish enrollment at the Boston school has fallen to roughly 7% — its lowest level since the pre-World War II era. 

Marcus said the Brandeis Center has been in “continuing engagement with Harvard University over both the challenges that we still see there and the efforts that they’re undertaking to address them.”

“This conference is a part of that process and we hope it can be used to take the problems that they have had at Harvard and to turn them into something positive, not just for Harvard University and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but for the country as a whole,” continued Marcus.

“We see this as the first of a series of conferences that we will have at Harvard University and may consider hosting them in other locations as well,” he said.