Silicon Valley Has a Harvard Problem
I n 1976, Frank Collin, an ambitious leader in the small but resilient Nazi party of the United States, planned a march in Skokie, Illinois—an attempt to raise the profile of his organization and build support for his cause. The town, many of whose residents were Jewish and had lived through the war, vehemently opposed the demonstration, and the case went to the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the legal defense of Collin and his fellow Nazis on First Amendment grounds—a move that would be almost unthinkable today.
Aryeh Neier, the national executive director of the ACLU at the time, received thousands of letters condemning his organization’s decision to defend the free speech rights of Nazis. Neier was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1937 and fled from Germany to England along with his parents as a child. He later estimated that 30,000 ACLU members left the organization as a result of its decision to come to the legal defense of the Nazi demonstrators.
His interest in protecting Collin’s right to free speech under the First Amendment was not rooted in an unthinking commitment to liberalism or its values. He instead held two seemingly contradictory yet deeply felt and genuine beliefs—in the abhorrence of Collin’s views as well as the importance of defending his right to express them against infringement by the state. “To defend myself, I must restrain power with freedom, even if the temporary beneficiaries are the enemies of freedom,” he later wrote. His beliefs had a cost, and their defense required putting the credibility of his organization, and himself, at risk.
