Robert L. Bernstein
| Robert L. Bernstein | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 5, 1923 New York City, United States |
| Occupation | Book publisher and human rights activist |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard |
Robert L. Bernstein is an American publisher and human rights activist.
Bernstein started as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Bennett Cerf as President and CEO in 1966. He served as the President of Random House for 25 years. He published many great American authors, including William Faulkner, James Michener, Dr. Seuss, Toni Morrison and William Styron.
After being invited to the Soviet Union as part of a delegation from the Association of American Publishers, he became interested in writers whose work could not be published in their own countries. Beginning with Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, he ensured that authors like Václav Havel, Jacobo Timerman, Xu Wenli and Wei Jingsheng were all published around the world.
After his experience in Moscow in 1973, Bernstein returned to the U.S. and established the Fund for Free Expression, the parent organization of Helsinki Watch which was established to monitor the former Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords.
In 1988, the series of "Watch Committees" created throughout the 1980s—Americas Watch, Asia Watch, Middle East Watch—merged to become Human Rights Watch, one of the largest human rights organizations in the world. Bernstein served as the Chair of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998, when he became Founding Chair Emeritus, a title he still holds today. Bernstein is also a board member and Chair Emeritus of Human Rights in China.
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