about us

• Lori Lowenthal Marcus, The Deborah Project’s Legal Director, is an experienced litigator, who also worked for ten years as a journalist focused on Israel and the Middle East conflict, as well as on antisemitism/anti-Zionism in America.  Her articles, op-eds and columns have appeared in national and international media including the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the Jerusalem Post, and many others. Founder of Z STREET, an educational non-profit devoted to educating the public about the Middle East and about the response of democratic nations to terror, Marcus successfully sued the Internal Revenue Service for viewpoint discrimination after learning that the IRS delayed Z STREET’s application for tax-exempt status because the positions it took regarding Israel were at odds with those of the Obama administration.  Marcus is a graduate of Brandeis University, has two masters' degrees from Bryn Mawr College, and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

•  Jerome M. Marcus, President and co-founder of the Deborah Project, has been a lawyer in private practice and in government for over 35 years.  A principal in a small litigation boutique for the last 17 years, he has also served as pro bono lead counsel on several cases challenging anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activity.  In Bronner v. American Studies Association,  Mr. Marcus has led a team of lawyers challenging a BDS resolution allegedly adopted by an academic society.  That case has yielded extensive discovery from the activists revealing their appropriation of the society’s endowment to fund BDS activity and their manipulation of the society’s voting procedures in an effort to suppress pro-Israel voices.  In Z STREET v. IRS, Mr. Marcus successfully prosecuted the first challenge to the Internal Revenue Service’s Obama-era policy of hostility toward Jewish and Israel-oriented entities seeking tax-exempt status, securing an apology from the IRS, award of an exemption that had been withheld for over seven years, and attorney’s fees.  Mr. Marcus is an alumnus of the University of Chicago’s college, business, and law school, and served, earlier in his career, as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and as special assistant to the Legal Advisor United States Department of State.

• Johanna E. Markind

is a staff attorney at The Deborah Project. She has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Middle East Quarterly, Tower Magazine, The Forward, and elsewhere about criminal justice reform, hate crimes, extremist radicalism, campus radicalism, free speech, antisemitism, and Israel. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a JD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.