James Loeffler: The Crime of Menticide

The Stahl Center for Jewish Studies proudly hosts James Loeffler, presenting “The Crime of Menticide: Antisemitism and Hate Speech in American Law.”

In 1977, a group of Holocaust survivors from Skokie, Illinois, filed a lawsuit to stop a planned neo-Nazi march by alleging menticide – the psychological equivalent of genocide. In this lecture, historian James Loeffler reconstructs this curious legal episode and discusses its larger implications for the contemporary debate over antisemitism and free speech.