Robert L. Bernstein, who built Random House into an international publishing giant, and founded Human Rights Watch to encourage freedom of expression and relief for oppressed people, died May 27 in Manhattan. He was 96. He was a man of “eclectic tastes with a passion for good books and noble causes,” The New York Times said.

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 Vaclav Havel.

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. “I never imagined that at 88 years old I would be founding a new human rights organization,” he said, “but I am doing it out of necessity, because I believe there are trends which are doing great damage to democracies throughout the world.”