Ep. 5 Aryeh Neier on “Defending My Enemy”

He has a glittering civil liberties résumé: co-founder of Human
Rights Watch, president of the Open Society Foundations for
nearly 20 years, professor of civil rights law.


But before all of that, Aryeh Neier was the executive director of
the ACLU during one of its most turbulent moments: when it came
to the defense of neo-Nazis trying to exercise their right to
free speech and assembly in Skokie, Illinois in 1977.


In this week’s episode, we speak with Neier about that time and
about his seminal 1979 book, ‘Defending My Enemy: American Nazis,
the Skokie Case, and the Risks of Freedom.’


In addition to Skokie, the conversation touches on why the
defense of civil liberties shouldn’t be placed on the political
spectrum, Neier’s formative years fighting speaker bans on
college campuses, and why free speech can’t be blamed for the
violence in Weimar Germany, Rwanda, and Bosnia in the 20th
century.


The conversation also veers toward what Neier sees as one of the
greatest threats to free speech today: political correctness.


This episode caps off our series on the topic of “defending my
enemy,” which explores why people who vehemently oppose certain
ideas nonetheless staunchly defend the right of others to express
them. The series was inspired by Neier’s book.


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