'You Started With a Tough Case:" Jews and Anti-Discrimination Law with Rona Kaufman

On this episode of Don't Know Much About, Dr. Naya Lekht sits down with Professor Rona Kaufman, co-founder of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies.Naya opens with a case study: a campus speaker who deploys libels against Israel. Is that legal? “Oof,” says Professor Kaufman, “you started with a tough case.” From there, the conversation moves into the basics of anti-discrimination law and free speech protections.To explain the difficulty of securing Jewish civil rights, Rona takes listeners and viewers on a historical journey, showing how women fought to define and expose discrimination in the workplace—and how naming what discrimination looks like was itself a crucial step in gaining legal protection.Throughout the episode, Naya presents a series of real-world scenarios for Rona to analyze, leading to a deeper question: what ultimately drives change—law or culture? Many behaviors we now recognize as unacceptable were once entirely legal. Did the law lead cultural change, or did culture push the law to evolve?This and more in a thought-provoking episode of Don't Know Much About.Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.