Michael Meyers

Michael Meyers is president and executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition (NYCRC), a nongovernmental, nonpartisan civil rights organization, which he cofounded in 1986. He has headed up NYCRC since leaving his senior staff position in the New Jersey Department of Higher Education in 1991, where he had served as special assistant to Chancellor T. Edward Hollander.

Meyers has spent his entire professional career working in the fields of civil rights, civil liberties, law, housing, education, and urban affairs, and, as such, is regarded as a leading intellectual and specialist on civil rights and race matters. Born in Harlem, New York, he attended public schools in New York City, then Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took his bachelor’s degree, and later Rutgers University, where he earned his J.D. degree.

Meyers is also a prolific writer. For some nine years, he wrote a regular and popular column for The New York Post and now writes regularly for a syndicate. He has an extensive list of publications in local, regional, and national newspapers, including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

A prominent civil libertarian, Meyers has served on the national board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) since 1981, and he is currently a national vice president of the ACLU. He is also an experienced public speaker who has appeared on television programs such as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Charlie Rose, America’s Black Forum, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Today Show.

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