Hentoff was a champion of civil rights - true civil rights (i.e. equal treatment before the law), not quotas or set asides.
He was a co-author (with Daniel Moynihan) of Beyond the Melting Pot, the book that single-handedly turned urban policy away from large-scale welfare-state projects and toward piecemeal solutions. It was a neoconservative manifesto of sorts.
He has had great friendships with many conservatives. IIRC, he actually supported WFB in his run for mayor in 1965, simply because Buckley was an iconoclast, and the sole intellectual in the race.