He teaches global business and law as an Associate Professor at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a summer Lecturer in the History Department at Columbia University in the City of New York.

His historical research examines the intersection of U.S. military power, economic and cultural globalization, and international law in the 20th and 21st centuries. His book Napalm, An American Biography the first comprehensive history of the incendiary weapon, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, and has been translated into Japanese. He has been interviewed in many media outlets including NPR affiliates WBUR and WGBH Radio, Irish Radio, and CNBC Asia.

He has taught at Columbia since 2006: as a Preceptor and Teaching Assistant from 2006-2011; as a Core Lecturer from 2011-2014, and as a summer Lecturer since then.  He was received the TOMS Core Faculty Fellow award for excellence in teaching in 2013-2014.

Neer received his U.S. History Ph.D. in 2011, his M.Phil in 2007, and his J.D. and M.A. degrees in 1991, all from Columbia. The History Department awarded him a Helen Lehman Buttenwieser Fellowship. He received a Recognition of Achievement with Honors in International and Foreign Law from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law at the law school.

Between 1991 and 2005 he founded, developed and sold media businesses in London, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Boston, worked for the Howard Dean and John Kerry presidential campaigns, and served as Campaign Manager for Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti's successful first run for the office.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1986 with a major in U.S. History. Between college and law school he studied Southeast Asian politics at the National University of Singapore as a Fulbright Scholar, worked as a fund manager for the Lazard Asia investment bank in Hong Kong, wrote freelance news and travel articles for The Boston Globe and The Asian Wall Street Journal, among other periodicals, and traveled to all seven continents.

Neer co-founded BlueMassGroup.com in 2004, the most widely read independent political blog in New England, with about 1.25 million unique annual readers, and wrote frequently for the site until 2016. In 2007, he wrote Barack Obama for Beginners: An Essential Guide, distributed by Random House. This was the best selling title in the 23-year history of its publisher For Beginners books. The firm published a revised and expanded Presidential Edition in 2009. It has been translated into Russian.