Ira Saul Glasser (born April 18, 1938) served as the fifth executive director of the

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the United States Constitution, Constitution and L ...

from 1978 to 2001. His life was the subject of the 2020 documentary '' Mighty Ira''.

Early years

Ira Glasser was born on April 18, 1938, at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. He earned a graduate degree in mathematics from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Early career

In the early 1960s, Glasser taught mathematics at Queens College (CUNY) and Sarah Lawrence College. From 1963 to 1967, he was the editor of ''Current'' magazine. In 1967, Glasser joined the

New York Civil Liberties Union The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is a civil rights organization in the United States. Founded in November 1951 as the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, it is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization with nea ...

as associate director. In 1970 he became the NYCLU's executive director, in which capacity he served until he became the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1978.

Executive director

The ACLU website credits Glasser with transforming the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

"from a '

mom and pop ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gestati ...

'-style operation concentrated mainly in a few large cities to a nationwide civil liberties powerhouse." At the end of Glasser's directorship the ACLU maintained staffed offices in all fifty states, the

District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, and

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; when he became director in 1978, only about half of the states had staffed offices. Glasser raised the ACLU's annual income from $4 million in 1978 to $45 million in 1999. Although the ACLU had protected civil liberties generally through litigation, Glasser expanded the focus of the ACLU's activities through

lobbying In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, which ...

and public education programs.Ira Glasser on Free Speech , Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
/ref> Glasser retired in 2001; he was succeeded as executive director of the ACLU by

Anthony D. Romero Anthony D. Romero (Born July 9, 1965) is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He assumed the position in 2001 as the first Latino and openly gay man to do so. Early life and education Romero was born in Bronx, New York ...

. In his retired life, Glasser serves as the president of the board of directors of the

Drug Policy Alliance The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is a New York City–based nonprofit organization that seeks to advance policies that “reduce the harms of both drug use and drug prohibition, and to promote the sovereignty of individuals over their minds and b ...

Publications

* ''Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence'' (co-author, 1978) * ''Visions of Liberty: The Bill of Rights for All Americans'' (1991) * ''BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters'' (narrator) – Produced by Flex Your Rights

Notes

References

Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics Biography
* National Review, April 7, 1994

* Transcript of Ira Glasser'
1988 pre-election speech
defending the ACLU

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Glasser, Ira 1938 births Living people 20th-century American Jews Jewish activists American Civil Liberties Union people People from Brooklyn Ohio State University Graduate School alumni Queens College, City University of New York faculty Sarah Lawrence College faculty Activists from New York (state) 21st-century American Jews