Before joining the Soros Foundation as President in September 1993, Aryeh Neier spent twelve years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder. Prior to that position, he worked at the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years, including eight as National Director. Mr. Neier served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University for more than a dozen years (1978-1991) and has lectured at a number of the country’s leading universities. He is the recipient of three honorary doctorates and the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award. He has been a columnist for The Nation, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, and has also published in such periodicals as The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Foreign Policy, and a number of law journals. He has contributed more than a hundred op-ed articles to newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and The International Herald Tribune, and has appeared frequently on such television programs as "Nightline," The McNeil Lehrer Newshour," and the "Today Show." He is the author of five books: Dossier (1975); Crimes and Punishment: A Radical Solution (1976); and Defending the Enemy (1979). Mr. Neier has also contributed chapters to more than twenty-five books. Mr. Neier was born in Nazi Germany and became a refugee at an early age. An internally recognized expert on human rights, he has conducted investigations of human rights abuses in more than forty countries around the world and, over the past decade, has been directly engaged in the global debate on accountability and bringing to justice those who have committed crimes against humanity, the subject of his forthcoming book. He has played a leading role in the establishment of the international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia.