Appreciation: Ira Glasser, Retired.(American Civil Liberties Union)(Brief Article)

The retiring head of the American Civil Liberties Union is a singular figure. Ira Glasser has served as executive director of the ACLU since 1978, and has been a great personal presence owing to his intelligence and capacity to laugh. I attended a party given in his honor by the ACLU that glowed with pride and pleasure, and featured a 15-minute documentary on Glasser's life and accomplishments that was Hollywood- caliber.

I recall another departure, recorded in the book I wrote on the United Nations. " . . . I had promised to attend a little party. In honor of Roger Baldwin, founder and godfather of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was celebrating his ninetieth birthday. There is a lot about Roger Baldwin I have disagreed with-over the years he sometimes fused his social ideas with civil-rights doctrine. There he was, in the large living room of a friend, surrounded by what seemed a mob-maybe 150 people, of every age. Old warriors from the social-democratic movement in America of the Thirties, young starstruck lawyers, groupies of the civil-rights movement, pretty graduate students. Norman Cousins gave a little talk, witty and warm, and Baldwin rose to speak, a truly ...