Robert L Bernstein

Robert L. Bernstein, who built Random House into an international publishing giant and championed political dissent, freedom of expression and relief for oppressed peoples as the founder of Human Rights Watch, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 96. Mr. Bernstein’s son Peter confirmed the death, at a hospital. The worlds of publishing and human rights frequently overlapped during the Cold War and an era of repressive regimes that censored, imprisoned and exiled dissidents, and Mr. Bernstein — a man of eclectic tastes with a passion for good books and noble causes — resided comfortably in both. As the head of Random House from 1966 to 1990, he published a host of American authors, including James A. Michener, Toni Morrison, William Styron, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, E. L. Doctorow and Robert Ludlum. He also published the Soviet dissidents Andrei D. Sakharov, Yelena G. Bonner and Arkady N. Shevchenko; the Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman, and the Czech writer-revolutionary Václav Havel. Random House under Mr. Bernstein, who personally approved all major acquisitions, became the world’s largest publisher of general interest books, known as trade books. Revenues grew from $40 million to $850 million annually, and the flagship acquired many of America’s best-known publishing houses, including the Crown Group, Vintage, Ballantine, Fawcett and Schocken. Mr. Bernstein was ousted by S.I. Newhouse Jr., whose family owned the publishing empire that had bought Random House in 1980. He was succeeded on Jan. 3, 1990, by Alberto Vitale, the president and chief executive of Bantam Doubleday Dell. With Mr. Bernstein as founding chairman, Human Rights Watch and its constituent groups established a global presence, exposing genocide, torture and war crimes in Africa and Central America, and political corruption, criminal justice violations, racial and gender discrimination, and other abuses in many lands. He retired in 1998 after 20 years at the helm. in 2011, he established a new group, Advancing Human Rights, and became its chairman. Robert Louis Bernstein was born in Manhattan on Jan. 5, 1923, one of two children of Alfred and Sylvia (Bloch) Bernstein. His father was in the textile business. The boy attended the Lincoln School, a progressive affiliate of Columbia University, graduating in 1940. At Harvard, he completed work for a degree in history in two and a half years, although he did not receive his degree until 1944. He served in the Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1946. In 1950, he married Helen Walter, and she survives him. In addition to her and his son Peter, he is survived by two other sons, Tom and William; his sister, Barbara Rosenberg; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.