Richard Hamm
The Jewish Civil Libertarian Arthur Garfield Hays

February 16, 2012 at 7:00pm

From the 1920s until his death in 1955, Arthur Garfeld Hays—a grandchild of German-Jewish immigrants—was a leading advocate of civil liberties in American society. As UAlbany Professor of History Richard Hamm discusses, Hays was often embroiled in controversies over Zionism, group libel laws, and defenses of American Nazis’ free speech rights. Hays also consistently stuck to his view that the best way for Jews to protect their own civil liberties was to come to the defense of other groups who were persecuted.