Book: "Exceptional Hatred: Anti­semitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Mod­ern America"

Few issues are as vexed today as anti­semitism and free speech. There is scarce­ly an are­na where we are not polar­ized over what counts as anti­semitism, which speech is pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, and what the law should do about hatred. In a polit­i­cal cri­sis, anti­semitism has become a point of ide­o­log­i­cal obses­sion. None of this is new. From two anti­se­mit­ic riots in post­war Chica­go to a neo-Nazi march in 1970s Skok­ie, Illi­nois, and the Char­lottesville Unite the Right ral­ly in our own time, Loef­fler explores the ways in which America’s courts have grap­pled with hatred, free­dom, and the ten­sions at the heart of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy: Are some hatreds more dan­ger­ous than oth­ers? Is tol­er­at­ing hate speech the price we must pay for free speech? And can lib­er­al­ism ever make good on its promise to end hatred through law? Con­fronting these ques­tions, Excep­tion­al Hatred restores a miss­ing his­to­ry of hate speech, anti­semitism, and the law, one that points to how we might pro­tect dif­fer­ence with­out sur­ren­der­ing our prin­ci­ples of equal­i­ty and freedom.

James Loeffler is the Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, where he serves as Director of the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Program in Jewish Studies. He is also Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where he previously led the antisemitism research seminar. He writes widely on modern Jewish history from antisemitism to Zionism, with a focus on the overlooked ties between the Jewish past and the global present in politics, law, and culture.

Moderated by: Daniel Singer, Vice President of the Board of JCRB|AJC

Cost:

• Event only - Free
• Event & Book - $30

Book purchase tickets will close Thursday, Oct. 15, at 12 a.m.