Aryeh Neier is the President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations. He was Foundation’s President from 1993 to 2012. Before that, he served for 12 years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder in 1978. He worked 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union. He served as an adjunct professor of law at New York University for more than a dozen years and has taught at Georgetown University Law School. From 2012 to 2017 he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs of Sciences Po.

Neier is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and has published in periodicals such as the New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, etc.

Aryeh Neier is the recipient of seven honorary degrees and numerous awards from such organizations as the American Bar Association, the Swedish Bar Association, the International Bar Association and the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was a 2019 Aurora Forum Goodwill Ambassador and served as an Aurora Prize Expert Panel Member for the period 2016-2020.