Local navigation

    

     Donald Downs


Title: Professor
Office: 303 North Hall
Office Hours: https://kb.wisc.edu/polisci/page.php?id=28163
Phone: 608.263.2295
Has Voicemail: Yes
E-Mail: dadowns@wisc.edu
Keywords: Civic and Liberal Education, Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Free Speech, Military, Psychology and the Law, Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), University Politics


Donald Downs is the Alexander Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science, Law, and Journalism at UW-Madison, and the Glenn B. and Cleone Orr Hawkins Professor of Political Science at the University. His scholarship has dealt with a wide range of issues dealing with such issues as freedom of speech; academic freedom; American politics; political thought; political and legal movements; citizenship; campus politics; domestic violence, psychiatry, and the criminal law; and the relationship among the military, the university, and civic education.

Downs’ prize winning books include Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community and the First Amendment; The New Politics of Pornography; More than Victims: Battered Women, the Syndrome Society, and the Law; Cornell `69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University; Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus; and the recently published Arms and the University: Military Presence and the Civic Education on Non-Military Students (Cambridge University Press).

In addition to winning honors for his research, Downs has also won numerous teaching awards, including the University Teaching Award. He has been interviewed countless times by media and organizations around the world, and has been an active defender of academic freedom on campus (where he serves as the president of the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, an independent group) and in the nation.

 


Recent Publications

Donald Downs, Arms and the University: Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students (Cambridge University Press, 2012)   
Donald Downs, “The Pendulum Swings: The Fall and Return of ROTC to Elite Campuses, and Why It Matters,” The Forum, Vol. 9, no. 3 (2011).
http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol9/iss3/art6/  
Donald Downs “Watching Out for Number One,” Wisconsin Interest, December 2011   
Donald Downs Essay in “Symposium,” “The Danish Cartoon Controversy and the Challenges of Multicultural Politics: A Discussion of The Cartoons That Shook the World, By Jytte Klausen.” In Perspectives on Politics, September 2011.   
Donald Downs "ROTC and the Future of Liberal Education," Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review, May 15, 2009.
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i36/36b00801.htm  
Donald Downs "DuPont Circle Diversiphily," 22 Academic Questions (2009), pp. 207-225.   
Donald Downs "Academic Freedom: What It Is, What It Isn't, and How to Tell the Difference" John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, April 2009.
http://www.popecenter.org/inquiry_papers/article.html?id=2164  
 

Current Courses taught for Spring 2012-2013

452 - Criminal Law and Justice

Instructors: Donald Downs      Field: American Politics
Section Number: 001

695 - Prosem: Criminal Law & Jurisprudence

Instructors: Donald Downs      Field: American Politics
Section Number: 001