Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America

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With a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by Nadine Strossen
, that still would have made him a hero and a giant."-Nadine Strossen, former president, American Civil Liberties Union

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 Charlottesville march, 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 Nadine Strossen, Defending My Enemy offers razor-sharp analysis from the man Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute describes as "an icon of justice and fearlessness."

Reviews

"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)

Author Bio

Aryeh Neier has been the National Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, a co-founder of Human Rights Watch, and the President of the Open Societies Institute. In addition to writing half a dozen books on civil and human rights, he has authored over three hundred op-eds for venues including the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, and Foreign Policy. He lives in New York City.