"Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties: Black and Jewish Debates over Hate Speech Laws" will be the topic addressed by historian Cheryl Greenberg at the sixth annual Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild Memorial Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at Emory University.

Presented by Emory's Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, the free public lecture is scheduled at 7:30 p.m. in the presentation auditorium of the Oxford Road Building, 1390 Oxford Rd., on the Emory campus. A reception will follow. Parking is available in the building's parking deck.

Greenberg, the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History at Trinity College and aspecialist in African American history, will examine debates within Black and Jewish civil rights agencies over the most effective ways to protest offensive materials and explore the related question of to what extent legal protests can in themselves serve as censorship.

Greenberg's research ranges from African American communities during the Great Depression to grassroots organizing in the civil rights movement, and from race riots to Black-Jewish relations. She is the author of "To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression" (2009) and "Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century" (2006).   

The Rothschild Memorial Lecture was established in 2007 to honor the late Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild (1911-1973), the spiritual leader of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Congregation (“The Temple”), and a voice for social change in the city's Jewish community, and more broadly in Atlanta and throughout the South. Each year a guest scholar memorializes Rothschild with a lecture on a topic relevant to his life and work, such as Jewish ethics, Jewish social movements, modern Judaism or southern Jewish history.

The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies (TIJS) brings together scholars and students from a number of different departments and programs to engage in the interdisciplinary exploration of Jewish civilization and culture. The institute awards an undergraduate major and minor and provides support for doctoral-level work in Jewish studies in a variety of programs in the Laney Graduate School. Each year, the institute sponsors a series of public events, most notably the Tenenbaum Family Lecture in Judaic Studies and the Rothschild Seminar, bringing distinguished visiting scholars to campus to share knowledge with faculty, students and the Atlanta community.