Aryeh Neier

Neier was born in Berlin in 1937 and escaped Nazi Germany as a child; many of his relatives did not. As executive director of the ACLU in 1977 he defended the right of a neo-Nazi group to march in Skokie, Illinois, a town with many Holocaust survivors. Around 30,000 members resigned and the organisation's finances were badly hit. The courts sided with the marchers' right to demonstrate. His book Defending My Enemy explains the reasoning: a rule that lets the state ban hateful speech will be used against the people he cared about. He went on to lead Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Foundations.