In partnership with the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum and Moment Magazine
Presented by James Loeffler, Historian
Has antisemitism always been woven into American history or are we witnessing something fundamentally new? Why do Jews and Israel stand at the center of so many battles over free speech? And can we confront hate speech without sacrificing the freedoms we hold dear?
Drawing on his acclaimed new book, historian James Loeffler tackles these urgent questions head-on, illuminating what our current crisis reveals about the fragility—and resilience—of liberal democracy, and where we might go from here.
Tickets
Members: $5
General admission: $10
Chai : $18
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.
A graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities, he pursued postgraduate studies in Israel at the Pardes Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He went on to serve as Sound Archivist at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. His scholarly work has been supported by fellowships from the Dorot Foundation, the Wexner Foundation, the Fulbright Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. He has served as Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center, Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, and Robert A. Savitt Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is a permanent Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and immediate past editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review.
