This is a private event. For further information please contact Renee Lamarque at [email protected].
Join us for an evening with leading human rights advocate Aryeh Neier in celebration of a new edition of his groundbreaking work, Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America. This event will be moderated by Gara LaMarche.
This evening is generously hosted by Alex Soros. Books will be available for all attendees.
“Aryeh Neier’s Defending My Enemy is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. The book is a powerful reminder of why free speech matters—not just for the voices we agree with, but for the voices we abhor. Neier’s story of defending Nazis’ rights to speak in Skokie underscores a timeless truth: If we want to preserve freedom for our selves, we must be willing to defend it for others, no matter how deeply we disagree. At a time when censorship is on the rise globally, Defending My Enemy stands as a bold and principled call to action. Every advocate of free expression needs to read this book—and more importantly, live its lessons.” —Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
When Nazis wanted to express their right to free speech in 1977 by marching through Skokie, Illinois—a town with a large population of Holocaust survivors—Aryeh Neier, then the national director of the ACLU and himself a Holocaust survivor, came to the Nazis’ defense. Explaining what many saw as a despicable bridge too far for the First Amendment, Neier spelled out his thoughts about free speech in his 1979 book Defending My Enemy.
Nearly fifty years later, Neier revisits the topic of free speech in a volume that includes his original essay along with a new chapter addressing present-day First Amendment battles, including the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally, book bans, the heckler’s veto, attacks on free speech on college campuses, and the threat to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision in The New York Times v. Sullivan.
Including a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by longtime free speech champion and former ACLU national board president Professor Nadine Strossen, Defending My Enemy offers razor-sharp analysis from the man Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, describes as “an icon of justice and fearlessness.”
About Aryeh Neier
Aryeh Neier has served as Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union; as the founding Executive Director of Human Rights Watch; and as inaugural President of the Open Society Foundations. He is the author of seven books including, most recently, The International Human Rights Movement: A History, and more than 400 articles in such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has taught at New York University Law School, Georgetown University Law School and Sciences Po in Paris. He is the recipient of seven honorary degrees.
About PEN America Authors’ Evenings
The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for our full calendar of dinners.
Proceeds from the PEN America Authors’ Evenings support PEN America’s programming to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.