January 23, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights, by Aryeh Neier, Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations Network, in New York, reflects in this memoir on his 40-year career defending human rights.
Mr. Neier says that in those years the work of nonprofit organizations has done much to guarantee that human-rights issues occupy a prominent place in policy discussions.
Mr. Neier describes a variety of strategies used in his work.
During his tenure at the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1960s and ‘70s, as executive director of the New York affiliate and later as the national executive director, he relied largely on criminal and civil legal proceedings to redress abuses within police forces and mental-health institutions. In 1978, after co-founding the organization that later became Human Rights Watch, in New York, Mr. Neier drew upon investigative reports exposing human-rights violations in South America and elsewhere to put pressure on the U.S. government to impose sanctions. When he became president of the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute in 1993, he gained access to large sums of money that could be allocated to provide humanitarian relief and to establish new foundation programs, such as one focusing on helping dying people gain comfort, dignity, and relief from their pain.
In addition to his struggles in the United States and abroad to expose and end human-rights abuses, Mr. Neier describes his efforts to secure donations for those causes. For example, he mentions a series of full-page newspaper advertisements denouncing President Richard M. Nixon accompanied by coupons asking for support for the campaign to impeach the president that won members and money for the ACLU. Conversely, he says, membership declined after the organization defended neo-Nazi demonstrators in Skokie, Ill., in 1977.
The controversial nature of several projects also caused some difficulties in obtaining foundation support. For example, Mr. Neier writes that the Ford Foundation refused to allow its contributions to the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the early 1970s to benefit projects involving abortion rights.
Although Mr. Neier acknowledges unsuccessful attempts to promote civil liberties, he says he is optimistic that his efforts and those of his fellow “combatants” will lead to future gains in human rights worldwide.
Publisher: Public Affairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, N.Y. 10107; (212) 397-6666; http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com; 432 pages; $30.
