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The Man Who Built ACLU Into National Power Says ACLU Now ‘Intellectually Dishonest’

Hank Berrien
The Man Who Built ACLU Into National Power Says ACLU Now ‘Intellectually Dishonest’
David X Prutting/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

In an interview with Spiked, the man who was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001 and turned the organization into a national power slammed the organization for abandoning its core principles of defending free speech, asserting that the organization is “intellectually dishonest.”

Ira Glasser, who grew up in Brooklyn as a devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan and thus was stirred into fighting for racial justice as he watched the struggle Dodger legend Jackie Robinson faced as he broke the color line, has grown disenchanted as the ACLU, which under his leadership fought for the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, where numerous Holocaust survivors lived, has jettisoned its traditional position of defending free speech as it has become politicized in its fight against President Trump.

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