Larry Birns (born Lawrence Birns on July 22, 1929, died August 30, 2018) was the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal, not-for-profit organization monitoring human rights and political developments in Latin America. Birns grew up in New York City, studied at Bates and graduated from Columbia University, eventually doing postgraduate work in the social sciences at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University. Before founding the Council in 1975, Birns taught at Hamilton College and served with a United Nations mission in Chile during the Salvador Allende government.