The annual Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture, given by James Loeffler.

When wild conspiracy theories engender antisemitic violence, can the government do more to protect the public from the effects of hate speech without violating the First Amendment? In this lecture, historian James Loeffler looks back at a terrifying pogrom that took place in Chicago in 1949, and the ensuing court case that nearly changed the course of American civil rights history.

James Loeffler is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. His writings include the award-winning books Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century and The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire. He is currently writing a book about antisemitism and the First Amendment in postwar America, which grew out of his acclaimed 2021 Atlantic magazine article about the trial of the White Supremacist leaders of the 2017 attack on Charlottesville.