Taking Liberties Four Decades in The Struggle for Rights (Paperback)

From the Publisher: For over forty years, Aryeh Neier has stood with the vanguard in the struggle for rights. Since joining the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1963, he went on to become the youngest executive director in its history; to found and direct Human Rights Watch-the world's leading rights watchdog organization; and, most recently, to serve as president of the Open Society Institute. In Taking Liberties, Neier recounts this remarkable career. With striking detail and surprising candor, he recalls the persons he has encountered, the struggles in which he has taken part, and what, given the sometimes unintended consequences of these efforts, he might have done differently along the way.|The memoir of a movement as well as a life, Taking Liberties offers unparalleled insight into the history of human rights. It is essential reading for anyone interested in international law, human rights, civil liberties, and-from the Guantanamo detentions to the war crimes tribunals-the crucial issues of our day. Since joining the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1963 and becoming its youngest executive director, Aryeh Neier has been at the forefront of efforts to fight for civil liberties, human rights, and social justice. Whether he was confronting police abuse, defending draft opponents or defending free speech, as he did at the ACLU; out-maneuvering the Reagan administration over military abuses in El Salvador, promoting accountability for political crimes in Argentina and Chile or supporting dissidents in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as he did at Human Rights Watch; or trying to eradicate landmines, promote stability in the Balkans or establish an International Criminal Court, as he has at the Open Society Institute; Aryeh Neier has been methodical, relentless, and unusually successful. In this look back at an amazing career, Neier both reflects on the unintended consequences of some of his victories and why, if he had anticipated them, he might have done things differently; and reveals that some of the various movements of which he was a part had their greatest triumphs under the most adverse circumstances.