He served as an adjunct
professor of law at
New York University. Neier served as a director for the
League for Industrial Democracy and was involved in the renaming of its student division to form the group
Students for a Democratic Society in 1960. Neier was hired by the ACLU in 1963 and became the organization's executive director in 1970; in this role, he helped grow the organization's membership from 140,000 to 200,000. He led the ACLU's efforts to protect the
civil rights of prisoners and those in mental hospitals, fought for the
abolition of the death penalty and to make abortions available to those who need them. At a party in
Washington, D.C. in early 1976, an attendee from New York indicated that he would not vote for
Jimmy Carter for president because of his
Southern accent, to which
Charles Morgan, Jr., the ACLU's legislative director, replied "That's bigotry, and that makes you a bigot." Neier reprimanded Morgan, criticizing him for taking a public position on a candidate for public office. Morgan resigned from his post in April 1976, citing efforts by the bureaucracy at the ACLU to restrict his public statements. In 1978 he was among the founders of Helsinki Watch, which was renamed Human Rights Watch in 1988. Neier has led investigations of human rights abuses around the world, participating in the creation of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He has contributed articles and opinion pieces to newspapers, magazines and journals including
The New York Review of Books,
The New York Times Book Review and
Foreign Policy. Neier's 1979 book,
Defending My Enemy: America Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and the Risks of Freedom, is due to be republished in September 2025 with a new essay updating free speech developments over the last 50 years. ==Books==