About this Event
Presented by the Leo Baeck Institute as part of the LBI Forum on Free Speech and Democracy
Made possible in part by support from the Erna & Heinz Mayer Fund at the LBI
Each advance in media technology can serve both constructive and destructive purposes. When the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century, it helped disseminate the anti-Jewish blood libel and sear the image of a "dangerous" Jew in European Christian imagination. Later, modern newsprint and radio were quickly adopted by antisemites and white supremacists. Today, in the midst of another media revolution, extremism spreads rapidly online through social media and podcasts. This event will ask what role antisemitism and conspiracy theories have historically played in challenging democracies and undergirding authoritarianism. How does the structure of online platforms amplify extremists and create financial incentives for hate? And what should we do about it?
David Brody is the Executive Director and founder of the Alliance of Jewish Americans, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Jewish civil rights organization that confronts extremism and drives legal accountability in the U.S. He is a leading national expert on the intersections of white nationalism, surveillance technologies, and civil rights. Previously he was the director and founder of the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he advocated for policies to protect privacy and civil rights online and litigated against white supremacists and voter suppression efforts.
Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of several award-winning books, most recently, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023), Blood Libels, Hostile Archives: Reclaiming Interrupted Jewish Lives (2025). Her essays have also appeared in the New York Review of Books, Public Seminar, the JTA, and others. Teter's research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, HF Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center at the NYPL, the NEH, and the Center for Jewish History, among others. She is currently the President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
Leo Baeck Institute Forum on Free Speech and Democracy
Made possible in part by support from the Erna & Heinz Mayer Fund at the LBI
As the United States observes its sesquicentennial anniversary, one of its most cherished political values is also one of its most hotly debated. Is free speech still protected in America? If not, what poses the greater threat: state repression, a censorious culture, or a corporate media environment where free expression belongs to the highest bidder? In a world where hatred quickly metastasizes online – are the people even safe from free speech?
The ideas that found expression in the First Amendment and the constitutions of other liberal democracies were shaped and reshaped by Jewish thinkers from Spinoza to Arendt, enabled processes of Jewish emancipation and religious reform, and are still seen as undergirding religious freedom in pluralistic societies.
In this series, scholars, activists, and public intellectuals will explore these questions through the lens of German-Jewish history, starting with documents in the LBI collections and mining them for insight into the present.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00
