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Author: William A. Jacobson

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William A. Jacobson

William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School.

He is a 1981 graduate of Hamilton College and a 1984 graduate of Harvard Law School. At Harvard he was Senior Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal and Director of Litigation for the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Prior to joining the Cornell law faculty in 2007, Professor Jacobson had a highly successful civil litigation and arbitration practice in Providence, Rhode Island, concentrating in investment, employment, and business disputes in the securities industry, including many high profile cases reported in leading newspapers and magazines.

Professor Jacobson has argued cases in numerous federal and state courts, including the Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, and the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Professor Jacobson has a national reputation as a leading practitioner in securities arbitration. He was Treasurer, and is a former member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, a professional organization of attorneys dedicated to protecting public investors. He frequently is quoted in national media on issues related to investment fraud and investor protection, and in the past has served as one of a small number of private practice attorneys who trained new arbitrators for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Professor Jacobson is co-author of the Securities Arbitration Desk Reference (Thomson-Reuters), updated annually.

Professor Jacobson is frequently quoted in the media on political and legal topics, has authored many Op-Eds in major publications, and appears on television and radio to discuss politics and the law.

A more complete listing of Professor Jacobson's professional background is available at the Cornell Law School website. The views expressed here are his own and not those of any employer or organization,

The best way to reach Prof. Jacobson is by e-mail here.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 19, 2014 27 Comments
Columbia University has been the focus of heated arguments over the university's handling of sexual assault complaints. In recent days, the names of alleged "rapists" have been scrawled on bathroom walls and in flyers, as reported at The Columbia Spectator, The NY Daily News, and The Columbia Lion, and Jezebel, which provided this redacted image: http://jezebel.com/rapist-list-mysteriously-appearing-in-columbia-universi-1575660992/1575819470/+morninggloria Also this week, a former Columbia student went public with her story of an alleged rape: Against this backdrop of claims that sexual assaults are not addressed adequately by administrators, there has been substantial pushback at many campuses that the definitions of sexual assault and consent used on campuses are overly broad and that males are not given sufficient due process protection: Earlier today in federal court in New York a Complaint was filed by a former Columbia student alleging that he was unfairly found to have committed a sexual assault based upon allegedly flimsy and inconsistent evidence, without due process protections. The Complaint is embedded at the bottom of this post. The heart of the Complaint is that the sex was consensual, as evidenced by the lack of contemporaneous complaint and a delay of 5 months in complaining:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 19, 2014 10 Comments
I don't know much about Indian politics, so I haven't written about the election sweep which threw out the long-dominant Congress Party. I do know that successive Indian governments have had at times contradictory relations with with Israel; not as crazed anti-Israel as many, but not solidly on Israel's side either. Indian-born writer Vijeta Uniyal believes that the election signals a sea change both politically and economically, with India looking to Israel for technology and investment to jump start the moribund Indian economy, India’s PM-elect Narendra Modi: a friend of Israel:
Narendra Modi is the next Prime Minister of India. Modi’s NDA-Alliance won 336 out of 543 seats in the Indian parliament. He has routed the ruling Congress Party led by Rahul Gandhi, the 4th generation member of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty Modi is arguably one of the most capable administrators in India. As Chief Minister of Gujarat State (2002-14) he turned around the economy, created infrastructure and improved public services. With a population of 60 million, Gujarat’s per-capita GDP today is much higher than India’s average. A lot of ink has been spilled in the international press over this relatively unknown man now at the helm in New Delhi. However there is one story readers in Israel need to hear: Modi is a friend of Israel, the like of whom India has not seen before. This fact can be stated without any exaggeration or wishful thinking. All one needs to do is to look at Modi’s track record. Modi is the first Indian leader to have actually visited Israel. He has often expressed admiration for Israel’s achievements in research, technology and innovation; espacially in the field of agriculture and water resources. Every year more than 2000 farmers from Gujarat visit Israel to get trained in advance farming techniques – at their own expense. He welcomed Israeli Companies to enter water management and recycling sector in 50 cities of Gujarat; and invited Israel to be the guest country at Gujarat state’s flagship Agricultural Fair (Vibrant Gujarat Agro Tech Global Fair 2014).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 18, 2014 26 Comments
Sarah Palin, who also was Governor of Alaska at the time of her nomination for Veep, was excoriated by the mainstream media for her stint as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, with the argument being that her job only involved overseeing a few departments.  It was less than worthless experience, the meme went. So Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio, is being groomed for a potential Veep slot in 2016 through a cabinet appointment, as discussed yesterday, Mayor of San Antonio one heartbeat away from the presidency? I assumed that the position of Mayor of San Antonio was a serious job, like being the Mayor of many other big cities.  While a spot on a presidential ticket for someone who never was more than a Mayor would be unusual, we have had Mayors like Rudy Guiliani make presidential runs. I gave Castro the benefit of the doubt on managerial and policy experience.  I was wrong. It turns out that being Mayor of San Antonio involves no more responsibility than being Mayor of Wasilla, and maybe less. Byron York reports, in a column focused mostly on Castro's big payday from a politically connected trial law firm, that being Mayor of San Antonio is nothing more than a superficial public relations position which pays even less than much-abused adjunct professors get paid:
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro is widely referred to as a "rising star" in Democratic politics. There's even talk the Mexican-American Castro could earn the vice-presidential spot on the 2016 Democratic ticket in an effort to further strengthen the party's bonds with Hispanic voters. And now, it appears Castro's national profile is about to rise with word that President Obama plans to nominate him to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. If Castro is tapped for the job, his Senate confirmation hearings will likely shine a spotlight both on his role in San Antonio's government and his way of making a living. San Antonio, the second-largest city in Texas and seventh-largest in the nation, has a council-manager-weak mayor form of government. The manager runs the city. "The office of the city manager serves as the focal point for the executive leadership and direction of the city organization," says the website of San Antonio City Manager Sheryl Sculley. The site says Sculley, in office seven years, has "appointed executive leadership, reorganized city departments, streamlined city business systems, improved customer service and elevated the professionalism of city management." Sculley makes $355,000 a year, one of the highest salaries for a local office in Texas.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 18, 2014 16 Comments
The fragile college student mind is getting more fragile by the day. As if the normal run of political correctness were not enough, we now have "Trigger Warnings" -- the notion that students need to be warned that the material they are about to read in class may "trigger" emotional upset. The concept has been growing on campuses over the past couple of years.  The New York Times reports:
Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans. The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them. But there have been similar requests from students at Oberlin College, Rutgers University,the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools. The debate has left many academics fuming, saying that professors should be trusted to use common sense and that being provocative is part of their mandate. Trigger warnings, they say, suggest a certain fragility of mind that higher learning is meant to challenge, not embrace. The warnings have been widely debated in intellectual circles and largely criticized in opinion magazines, newspaper editorials and academic email lists. “Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom,” said Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor at the university here, who often uses graphic depictions of torture in her courses about war. “Any student can request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of one-size-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even dangerous.”
Of course, how the trigger is defined says much about the theory behind the movement -- it almost always serves left-wing critical race and gender theories, as at Oberlin, as the Times further reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2014 12 Comments
I've seen this coming for a couple of years. Julian Castro, the Mayor of San Antonio, reportedly is being nominated for a Cabinet post to give him the credentials to be Hillary's Veep pick. San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro Is Said to Be HUD Pick in Cabinet Reshuffling:
President Obama is preparing to nominate Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio as his new secretary of housing and urban development, elevating one of his party’s Hispanic rising stars as part of a cabinet shuffle that has possible implications for the 2016 presidential race, Democrats informed about the plans said on Saturday. Mr. Castro, who has often been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats, would take the place of Shaun Donovan, who would become director of the Office of Management and Budget.... Mr. Castro, 39, won national attention in 2012 as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, and he and his twin brother, Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, have become popular speakers on the party’s fund-raising circuit. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have predicated their future electoral hopes on appealing to the country’s growing Hispanic population as House Republicans have blocked their efforts to overhaul the immigration system.
Scott Conrad also saw this coming, writing in August 2013, Vice President Julian Castro?:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2014 12 Comments
In early April, The New York Daily News had a blistering Editorial regarding the anti-Israel Climate at Vassar College, Vassar’s miseducation, focusing on the anti-Israel climate we documented in Anti-Israel academic boycott turns ugly at Vassar. Today the Daily News has another devastating rebuke to Vassar, focusing on the reaction to my speech at Vassar which culminated in the now-infamous posting of a Nazi propaganda poster by Students for Justice in Palestine. I previously knew that the several academic departments which co-sponsored the anti-Israel Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah appearance the week before my appearance, would not sponsor me.  I did not previously know that college funds were used for the Blumenthal-Abunimah appearance. Read the whole thing.  Here's an excerpt from Vile at Vassar:
... Faculty members have joined the depravity. Thirty-nine professors protested after [Vassar President Catharine] Hill properly said in January that Vassar would not join the American Studies Association’s anti-Semitism-tinged call for boycotting Israeli universities. The 39 backed the boycott, with some asserting that Hill’s action “silenced discourse on campus,” as one put it. Duh, they claim they want dialogue while supporting a boycott against dialogue. Then it turned out that the 39 lacked the courage of their convictions. When Cornell University Law School professor Bill Jacobson challenged the entire group to debate the merits of boycotting Israel, they all ducked. So on May 5, Jacobson spoke — without fee — on campus at the invitation of the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union, which is headed by a Muslim student. The libertarian union had sought co-sponsorships for Jacobson’s talk from numerous student groups and academic departments. All refused, a fact that demonstrates how strongly anti-Israel sentiment holds sway at Vassar, perhaps inducing a climate of fear among those who feel otherwise.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 16, 2014 13 Comments
On April 28, 2014, I wrote about how J Street issues media Fatwa against its toughest pro-Israel student opponent:
[Daniel] Mael has been a relentless critic of J Street and its college chapters.... One of Mael’s articles even is featured in the trailer for the J Street Challenge....  Considering that The J Street Challenge is one of the biggest thorns in J Street’s side, it’s not much of a guess to believe that Mael’s affiliation with the movie is not popular at J Street...
I noted that J Street had issued a press statement requesting that media and bloggers "distance themselves" from Mael after an incident at Brandeis University, where Mael is a student.  Mael alleged that a J Street U member verbally abused him, a claim which was denied. For whatever its reason, J Street corporate headquarters through its communications team got involved in this local dispute (emphasis added):
...  we ask that others in the Jewish community and media – even those who don’t agree with us politically – will distance themselves from this blogger and others with a history of conduct driven by malice and deceit. While J Street and J Street U remain deeply committed to a vibrant and respectful campus conversation, there is a line that cannot be crossed. Unfortunately, some questionable bloggers and campus figures have consistently and consciously crossed that line. We will not tolerate harassment of our student leaders, and we see no reason for us to have any further interaction — on the Brandeis campus, online or in other venues — with those peddling in slander. We hope others will make the same determination.
Since then, two things have happened.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 15, 2014 31 Comments
NOTE: Literally seconds after this went live I received a message that Vassar had taken down the Wall of Truth which is the subject of this post after it was defaced by anti-Israel students.  The title and text of the post has been adjusted accordingly. Vassar College has been a hotbed of anti-Israel agitation by Students for Justice in Palestine and supporters, as documented in the following prior posts: The situation is so bad that a self-avowed left-wing Daily Kos Diarist and Vassar alumna/us wrote a stinging rebuke, Anti-Semitic Times at Vassar College:
I graduated from Vassar two years ago and I am a proud left winger, but I just can't be down with the Students for Justice in Palestine group at my alma mater. The group is full of filthy anti-Semites, who are spectacularly ignorant about everything from Nazi propaganda to Israel's defense of itself..... At Vassar, even for me, the unhinged left wingers could be too much.... Vassar has become a reactionary, ignorant, illiberal place full of unlettered bigots. No longer will I aid those values with donations.
The Vassar Conservative-Libertarian Union (VCLU), which sponsored my speech at Vassar, decided that it was time to protest before students left campus for the summer. VCLU erected a Wall of Truth to counter the many defamatory and false allegations made against Israel. [caption id="attachment_86233" align="alignnone" width="547"](Wall of Truth at Vassar College, May 2014, feat. Alec Ferretti and Julian Hassan) (Wall of Truth at Vassar College, May 2014, feat. Alec Ferretti and Julian Hassan)[/caption] The Wall of Truth specifically was placed in the same location that Vassar SJP puts its misnomered "Apartheid Wall" during Israeli Apartheid Week:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 15, 2014 43 Comments
The annual White Privilege Conference, which we first covered in 2010, is in the news because of video posted at Progressives Today exposing the almost insane indoctrination of teachers to indoctrinate students in critical race theory and anti-capitalism, White Privilege Industrial Complex exposed. In segment two of its series, Progressives Today exposes more truly bizarre and troubling parts of the conference, White Privilege Conference speakers judge by skin color and claim rape is not intrinsically bad:
  • Speaker Adrien Wing: ‘You can’t just look at the face’ and goes on to slam Clarence Thomas and Barack Obama.
  • Wing: Obama is ‘the face of global White privilege.’
  • Wing: Obama is the ‘black face in the White House.’
  • Wing: Urges attendees to think about ways to rein in freedom of speech
  • Speaker Paul Kivel compares Christianity to ‘racism and sexism or other systems of oppression.’
  • Speaker Leonard Zeskind: ‘The longer you are in the Tea Party, the more racist you become.’
  • Zeskind: Parents put their kids in private schools because they’re racist
  • Speaker Stephanie Baran: capitalism perpetuates white supremacy and privilege, racism and sexism
  • So-called ‘White ally:’ ‘White people do not experience racism.’
  • Ally: Rape is not intrinsically bad.
Here are a couple of key screen caps:
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