Larry Birns (July 22, 1929- ) is the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal, not-for-profit organization monitoring human rights and political developments in Latin America.

The Boston Globe described Birns as a lobbyist and a liberal critic of U.S. policy, and The New York Times said the Council on Hemispheric Affairs was a liberal research group specializing in United States-Latin America relations, and an organization critical of Reagan Administration policy in Latin America.

Birns was born in 1929 and grew up in New York City. He graduated from Columbia University and did postgraduate work in the social sciences at 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.