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

With a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by Nadine Strossen A new edition of the most important free speech book of the past half-century, with a new chapter by the author on some of the top First Amendment controversies of today

“If Aryeh Neier had done nothing else in his absolutely towering human rights, civil liberties career other than write Defending My Enemy, 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.”

© 2025 The New Press (Ebook): 9798893850093

Release date

Ebook: 23 September 2025