Professor N. Jeremi Duru teaches sports law, civil procedure, and employment discrimination, and he is among the nation’s foremost sports law authorities. He is a co-author of one of the field’s premier casebooks, Sports Law and Regulation: Cases and Materials (5th edition) (Wolters Kluwer), as well as one of the field’s premier explorations of sports agency, The Business of Sports Agents (3rd edition) (U. of Penn Press). In addition, he is the sole author of Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL (Oxford University Press), which examines the NFL’s movement toward increased equality of opportunity for coaches and front office personnel.
Professor Duru is active in the national sports law community, serving as a member of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s Anti-Doping Review Board, the NCAA’s Committees on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport, and the National Sports Law Institute’s Board of Advisors. He also frequently lectures and consults abroad. Among other international engagements, he has taught and studied on a Fulbright Fellowship at Faculdades Integradas Helio Alonso in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and has served as a visiting professor at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia and the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, China. In addition, he has served as a lecturer in the Union of European Football Association’s Executive Masters Program for International Players.
Professor Duru has a particular interest in sport’s impact on society, with a principle focus on racial and gender dynamics. He represents the Fritz Pollard Alliance of minority coaches, scouts, and front office personnel in the National Football League and has previously represented sports industry professionals in employment matters involving other leagues, including the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. In addition, he has represented collegiate student-athletes – most notably in McAdoo v. University of North Carolina – serving as counsel to plaintiffs suing the university with respect to its nearly two decades-long academic fraud scandal.
Professor Duru is widely recognized for his excellence as both an advocate and a teacher. He has received the National Bar Association’s Sports and Entertainment Lawyer of the Year Award as well as the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and the Washington College of Law Award for Excellence in Teaching. In addition, before joining the WCL faculty, while teaching at Temple Law School, Professor Duru received Temple’s George P. Williams Outstanding Law Professor of the Year Award.
Professor Duru received his undergraduate education at Brown University and then completed a joint-degree program at Harvard University, receiving a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, Professor Duru served as a law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Professor Duru is a frequent media contributor and has provided commentary for numerous media outlets, including CNN, BBC, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, ESPN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
