James Loeffler

Historian, Writer, Professor

Coming August 25, 2026

Exceptional Hatred

Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America

In our moment of democratic crisis, antisemitism has become an ideological obsession. Exceptional Hatred offers a revelatory new account of how we reached this point — and an argument for re-thinking how we reconcile free speech and equal rights in American law.

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“The platonic ideal of history―technicolor storytelling, level-headed analysis, brought to bear on the question that tends to make hypocrites of us all. Loeffler has written the book America’s broken public square desperately needs.”
―Franklin Foer, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Politician
“No other book shows both the power and limits of American law’s confrontation with hatred and the contradictions it exposes at liberalism’s core. A masterpiece.”
—Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times
“A revelatory exploration of law’s confrontation with antisemitism and the tensions between efforts to curb it and commitments to freedom of expression. Probing, learned, and engrossing."
―Randall Kennedy, author of Race, Crime, and the Law
"With this brilliant book, James Loeffler launches himself at the heart of legal and constitutional questions about free speech in America."
―Dahlia Lithwick, author of Lady Justice
"Deeply researched and powerfully argued, Exceptional Hatred should be required reading for anyone who cares about the current challenge of antisemitism – and what works and doesn’t work to fight it.”
―Noah Feldman, author of To Be a Jew Today
"Deft, judicious, and lucid... Required reading for anyone genuinely interested in the American Jewish experience―and the future of American democracy.”
―Shaul Magid, author of The Necessity of Exile
"A consummate stylist, Loeffler is able to combine sympathy and subtle irony in the same sentence. The narrative skill with which he handles legal minutiae as if they were plots twists in a novel makes the book, notwithstanding its somber subject, a pleasure to read."
―Kirkus Reviews
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About James

James Loeffler is Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, and Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. 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.

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