James Loeffler is Felix Posen Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Program in Jewish Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire, and, most recently, Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in ModernAmerica. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The New Republic, and he received the 2025 Rockower Press Award for Excellence in Writing about Antisemitism. He is a Permanent Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and Kogod SeniorResearch Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.