On The Front Lines
Calling Nat Hentoff a ‘National Treasure,’ The Rutherford Institute Wishes the Freedom Fighting Columnist a Happy 86th Birthday
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- In recognition of Nat Hentoff’s 86th birthday, John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, is calling upon Congress to recognize the life-long freedom fighter with a Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest civilian award in the United States. The decoration is awarded to an individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity, and national interest of the United States.
“At age 86, Nat Hentoff is without a doubt a national treasure of the highest order,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Nat Hentoff is a radical in the best sense of the word--a true freedom fighter and warrior journalist with a deep-seated intolerance of injustice. His integrity and willingness to buck the trends have earned him the well-deserved reputation of being one of our nation's most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers. But at the end of the day, what sets Nat Hentoff apart is the fact that he has never lost his sense of rage, nor his eternal optimism.”
Born in Boston on June 10, 1925, Nat Hentoff is a well-known civil libertarian, free speech activist, anti-death penalty advocate, pro-lifer and not uncommon critic of the ideological left. Accordingly, he has angered nearly every political faction and remains one of a few who has stuck to his principles through his many years of work, regardless of the trouble it stirred up. Armed with a keen understanding of the law and an enviable way with words, brandishing a rapier wit and teeming with moral outrage, Nat has never been one to back down from a fight, and there have been many over the course of his lifetime--one marked by controversy and fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights.
For example, Nat testified for stand-up comic and political satirist Lenny Bruce during his obscenity trial; stood up for a woman rejected from law school for being white; called into Oliver North's talk show to voice his agreement about liberal intolerance for free speech; and resigned from the ACLU in protest of their position on assisted suicide, as well as their position against revealing the results of HIV tests on newborn babies. Nat has also walked among political and cultural giants and lived to tell the tale. He was friends with Malcolm X, was labeled “the Antichrist” by Louis Farrakhan, and came to know some of the most talented jazzmen of all time--Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few. He also wrote liner notes for such musical greats as Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin.
Hentoff received a B.A. with honors from Northeastern University and did graduate work at Harvard. From 1953 to 1957, he was associate editor of Down Beat magazine. He has written many books on jazz, biographies and novels, including children's books. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Commonwealth, the New Republic, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years. In 1980, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Education and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns. In 1985, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Northeastern University. In February 2009, Hentoff joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow. Hentoff’s views on the rights of Americans to write, think and speak freely are expressed in his columns.
Friends and critics alike describe him as the kind of writer, and citizen, that all should aspire to be: “less interested in ‘exclusives’ than in ‘making a difference.’” As Allen Barra observed in the Village Voice: “Nat Hentoff has never allowed his thought to harden into ideology. He’s never lost his talent to agitate us and make us rethink our own positions--to make sure that our minds watch ourselves.”
