Leonard Zeskind (born 1950) is an American human rights activist. He is president of the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights (IREHR), a social justice and public affairs watchdog organization.^[1] For thirteen years prior concentration on human rights, he worked in industry. He worked on an automobile assembly line, installing refrigerator motors in vending machines, and as a welder and first-class fitter in steel fabrication plants.^[2]

Since 1982, he has been a community activist and human rights advocate. He is known for his research into extreme right, racist, and anti-Semitic organizations in the United States. The Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights served as a resource about such groups and their members when information about them rose dramatically following the storming of the Capitol of the United States on January 6, 2021.^[3]

He is a lifetime member of the NAACP. He also has served on the board of directors of the Petra Foundation and the Kansas City Jewish Community Relations Bureau.

Zeskind wrote the book entitled Blood and Politics.

• 1998 MacArthur Fellows Program
• 1992 Petra Foundation Fellowship

• "Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Murder of Dr. Tiller". The Huffington Post. June 2, 2009. Retrieved July 25, 2014.
• Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream, Macmillan, 2009, ISBN 978-0-374-10903-5

• Author's website
• "Leonard Zeskind: Blood and Politics", Open Source Audio
• "Right-Wing Extremism Expert Leonard Zeskind Analyzes the Movement That Nurtures Shooters Like Von Brunn and Roeder", Buzzflash, 06/11/2009
• "Leonard Zeskind on the Minutemen", Everyday Citizen, Stuart Elliott, March 19, 2008
• Leonard Zeskind featured on Real Law Radio, Leonard talks with Bob DiCello on the legal news talk radio program, Real Law Radio, about the infiltration of the Tea Party Movement by white supremacists (Podcasts/Saturday March 27, 2010).