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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 December 18, 2013 5 Comments
Brandeis University becomes the second confirmed university to drop its Institutional Membership in the American Studies Association over the anti-Israel academic boycott. Earlier we reported that Penn State Harrisburg would be dropping its membership. The real key will be whether universities also will refuse to allow university funds to be used to subsidize attendance at ASA events, which is how ASA makes most of its revenue. Yair Rosenberg at Tablet Magazine reports:
Brandeis University has become the second institution to withdraw from the American Studies Association, following the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster,” Brandeis’s American Studies Department posted on their web site. “We remain committed to the discipline of American Studies but we can no longer support an organization that has rejected two of the core principles of American culture–freedom of association and expression.”
The Brandeis statement reads:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 16 Comments

I just sent my first e-mail to a University President regarding the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association, and the similar boycott just announced by the small and relatively new Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. I could not find a direct e-mail...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 77 Comments
I have received a surprisingly large number of emails of support from people outraged at the anti-Israel academic boycott passed by the American Studies Association.  Almost all of those emails come from new readers. The question many of them ask is what they can do to help me not only in the challenge to ASA's tax-exempt status, but also to oppose the boycott. Readers can take action themselves by contacting University Presidents and Trustees for those 83 universities who are Institutional Members of the ASA, as well as the head of the university sytem for state institutions. Institutional Membership lends the good name of the university to a boycott that is anti-academic freedom and that subjects visiting Israeli scholars and faculty who hold joint appointments to discrimination on the basis of national origin.  Those memberships also likely reflect that university funds are used to support faculty participation in ASA events, ASA's main source of revenue. I will be writing today to the President of Cornell University, whose Cornell-Technion campus being built in New York City will be subject to the boycott and whose visiting Israeli scholars and joint appointees will be subject to discrimination by ASA on the basis of national origin. I also think it is appropriate to contact Senators, Congressmen, and Governors (for state university systems who maintain an Institutional Membership) since taxpayer money is used to subsidize participation in ASA events. It would be nice to have a single contact list, right? That's where you can help me.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 16 Comments
As detailed in numerous posts over the past weeks, the American Studies Association has passed an academic boycott of Israeli universities. Although the resolution does not make this distinction, ASA asserts in its explanation that the boycott applies only to the institutions and "not individual scholars, students, or cultural workers who will be able to participate in the ASA conference or give public lectures at campuses, provided they are not expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions, or of the Israeli government." The explanation continues that the boycott also applies to "participation in conferences or events officially sponsored by Israeli universities." This would mean the boycott applies to programs and projects jointly sponsored by U.S. and Israeli academic institutions, like the Cornell-Technion campus under construction in New York City, the Brandeis-Middlebury Program at Ben Gurion University, dozens of other programs for terms abroad in Israel run by U.S. universities but hosted at Israeli universities, and many other joint university programs. In the talking points ASA provided to its members on how to address criticism from University Administrators, Deans and Faculty, ASA states that "U.S. scholars are not discouraged under the terms of the boycott from traveling to Israel for academic purposes, provided they are not engaged in a formal partnership with or sponsorship by Israeli academic institutions." Now you can see how pernicious the ASA academic boycott becomes. ASA's boycott requires monitoring of individual Israeli scholars interacting with ASA and having such scholars disavow representation of their institutions.  No scholar from any other nation is required to disavow representation of their institutions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 16 Comments

Jim Matheson has been the Harry Houdini of modern politics, a Democrat surviving in a heavily Republican Utah district which became even more Republican after the 2010 redistricting. But he still beat Mia Love in 2012. By a few hundred votes. In Utah. With Romney at...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 20 Comments

Whether you should like it is a different question, but it will be law soon. Via USA Today, Senate vote clears budget deal for passage this week: The Senate on Tuesday cleared a key procedural hurdle for final passage of a two-year, bipartisan budget deal before the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2013 18 Comments
Upworthy is the wildly popular low-information-by-design website which has fine-tuned the ability to turn 2-3 sentence (at most) liberal memes viral.  Often, the meme consists entirely of the title, with some seemingly obvious liberal talking point that is only superficially obvious, but actually cannot withstand scrutiny. Which is why no scrutiny is given in the posts. You may recall my posts: Upworthy has turned a section of its website over the the AFL-CIO, presumably for a hefty payment.  The section is called Workonomics. This post and the video have been around for a while, but just came to my attention, 2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally; See What Happens Next.  There is no text after that, just a note to watch starting at the 1:34 mark. Spoiler Alert:  One monkey gets grapes after giving lab technician a rock, other monkey gets slices of cucumber.  Monkey which gets cucumbers is jealous and throws cucumber at lab technician.  Therefore?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2013 14 Comments

Sorry, but I have too many other things on my plate right now to dig into this, even though it's clearly an important decision which may eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A federal judge in D.C. has found parts of the NSA...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2013 28 Comments
An announcement just was posted on the American Studies Association website, and reads in part:
ASA Members Vote To Endorse Academic Boycott of Israel The members of the American Studies Association have endorsed the Association’s participation in a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. In an election that attracted 1252 voters, the largest number of participants in the organization’s history, 66.05% of voters endorsed the resolution, while 30.5% of voters voted no and 3.43% abstained. The election was a response to the ASA National Council’s announcement on December 4 that it supported the academic boycott and, in an unprecedented action to ensure a democratic process, asked its membership for their approval....
Of note, the total number of votes equals only about one-quarter of the total ASA membership of 5000. Those voting Yes represent approximately 16% of the total membership, yet it will be a vote that will stain the ASA for years to come. As I announced prior to the vote result, the Tax-Exempt Status of American Studies Association to be challenged if Israel boycott resolution passes. More to follow: So what's my take-away from this? I'm most shocked at the low turnout for the vote.  Given the time and energy devoted by the anti-Israel backers of the boycott, only 825 or so votes were in favor.  At the same time, opponents (who were ambushed by the proposal) only managed to get about 375 people interested.  Effectively, most people didn't care.  Apathy is perhaps the saddest lesson from this given the odious nature of the proposal, and it's how anti-Israel zealots are able to drive issues far out of proportion to their actual numbers.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 15, 2013 24 Comments

As I have previously indicated, I believe the anti-Israel academic boycott resolution of the American Studies Association calls into question ASA's 501(c)(3) tax exemption. Voting on the resolution ends at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, December 15.  If the resolution passes, I intend on challenging ASA's 501(c)(3) status through...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 15, 2013 14 Comments
Prior to the 2012 election there were claims that the Obama administration was concealing its intentions by deliberately not moving proposed regulations forward so as to avoid campaign controversy. Needless to say, the Obama campaign denied the charges then and now. We reported on how delay of regulations damaged the rollout of Obamacare, Re-election 2012: HHS went quiet on Obamacare regs leading to healthcare.gov tech failure The Washington Post reports on how organized the concealment and delay effort was, White House delayed enacting rules ahead of 2012 election to avoid controversy:
The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 15, 2013 15 Comments
The U.N. General Assembly in 1975 passed the odious Zionism is Racism resolution, which has since been rescinded. Voting closes today at the American Studies Association on an equally odious resolution singling out Israel, and Israel alone, for academic boycott. It is, as former Harvard President Lawrence Summers notes, "anti-Semitic" in its effect "if not in intent." The resolution has been harshly criticized by the American Association of University Professors and eight Past Presidents of the ASA as an abominable attack on academic freedom, among many other denunciations:
In no other context does the ASA discriminate on the basis of national origin—and for good reason. This is discrimination pure and simple. Worse, it is also discrimination that inevitably diminishes the pursuit of knowledge, by discarding knowledge simply because it is produced by a certain group of people.
Nonetheless, the anti-Israel venom is so strong among the leadership and membership of the ASA, that there is a strong possibility the resolution will pass. Reading the comments and arguments of those favoring the anti-Israel academic boycott, there is little doubt that they view Zionism as Racism and would equally support the now discredited 1975 U.N. Resolution if put to a vote at the ASA. (full speech embedded at bottom of post)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2013 29 Comments
No, not of me. Of Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt yucking it up at Nelson Mandela's memorial service. The allegation was that the reaction was racist. From the ever-reliable Salon.com, The media’s Michelle Obama problem: What a selfie says about our biases
More than anything, the response to these latest images of Michelle Obama speaks volumes about the expectations placed on black women in the public eye and how a black women’s default emotional state is perceived as angry. The black woman is ever at the ready to aggressively defend her territory. She is making her disapproval known. She never gets to simply be. Maybe the first lady is irritated with her husband or someone else, maybe she’s indifferent, maybe she’s thinking about the long plane ride home, maybe, just maybe, she’s recalling Nelson Mandela’s life and legacy. We will never know. Meanwhile, the Internet is speculating about Michelle Obama’s mind-set, her motivations and the state of her marriage because if a married black man, always on the prowl even if he is the commander in chief, is seen smiling next to an attractive white woman, well, that’s curtains for the marriage. The white she-devil strikes again! The first lady can’t win. Last month, Michelle Obama was a “feminist nightmare.” Today she is angry and on the verge of losing her marriage.
From Oliver Willis of Media Matters (tweeting his own opinion, of course):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2013 5 Comments

This is how a People self-destructs: Swarthmore Hillel Opens Door to Anti-Zionist Speakers With a little help from their "friends": Anti-Israel Activists at U. Michigan Serve Dorm Eviction Notices First they came for the couch burners: Michigan State. U. Police to Throw Book at Student Couch Burners Then the snow hooligans: U....

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