Constitution Day will be observed on September 13 this year and to mark the occasion, IJPM is bringing Victoria Saker Woeste to the Syracuse University campus to present on her new book, “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech.” A short abstract of her book follows below.

This presentation will also serve as a one of the scheduled 1L Convocation speeches. As such the entire 1L class will be in attendance at the lecture. The lecture will be held at Hendricks Chapel at the center of Syracuse University. This event is open to the public and we encourage you to attend.

Book Abstract:

Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech
Stanford University Press (2012)
Victoria Saker Woeste

This book provides a startling new interpretation of a scandalous episode in the life of Henry Ford: his side career as a publisher of antisemitic literature and propaganda. Using never-before discovered evidence from the Ford archives as well as private collections from lawyers and civil rights leaders involved in trying to stop Ford’s libelous newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, this book shows how deeply involved Ford was in the operation of his newspaper, how he invited the libel lawsuit that was filed against him in 1925, and how he maneuvered to end the litigation out of court. These newly discovered sources also reveal deep divisions among Jewish civil rights lawyers and religious leaders over how to handle the Ford matter and why they disagreed on the usefulness of resorting to law to answer hateful publications. Throughout the twentieth century, American courts have generally declined to recognize the category of hate speech as an exception to free speech rights under the First Amendment. Yet in order to end the embarrassing litigation, Henry Ford apologized to American Jews for the one thing he would never have lost on in court: the offense of hate speech against all Jews as a group. The case and its ambiguous resolution reveal the tensions in law and culture between individual freedoms and the status of those seeking equality on the basis of group identity.