Professor N. Jeremi Duru teaches several sports law courses as well as civil procedure, 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. Among other appointments, he serves on the Board of Directors for the Sports Lawyers Association and for the Fritz Pollard Alliance of coaches, scouts and executives of color in the National Football League, the National Sports Law Institute’s Board of Advisors, and the LawInSport Editorial Board. He has also served as a member of the NCAA’s Committees on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport, the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s Anti-Doping Review Board and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s Racial and Social Justice Expert Advisory Team.

Professor Duru has a particular interest in sport’s impact on society, with a principle focus on racial and gender dynamics. He has conducted research and delivered lectures on these topics throughout the United States as well as abroad, including as: a Fulbright Fellow at Faculdades Integradas Helio Alonso in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; a Parsons Visitor at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia; and a Visiting Professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, China. In addition, Professor Duru remains active in practice. He has represented sports industry professionals in employment matters involving the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball. He has also 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.