Professor Emeritus
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Donald A. Downs is the Alexander Meiklejohn Emeritus Professor of Political Science, and Emeritus Affiliate Professor of Law and Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Four of his books won national awards. Downs has written about academic freedom, free speech; campus politics; American politics; political and legal thought and movements; citizenship; domestic violence, psychiatry, and the criminal law; and the relationship among the military, the university, and civic education. His most recent books are The Value and Limits of Academic Speech: Philosophical, Political, and Legal Aspects (Routledge, 2018), Chris W. Surprenant, co-editor; and Free Speech and Liberal Education: A Plea for Intellectual Diversity and Tolerance (Cato, 2020).
He served as secretary and then president of the independent Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights at Wisconsin from 1996-2016 and as faculty adviser to the Open Inquiry Project at the Institute for Humane Studies, 2015-2019. He currently serves on the Academic Affairs Committee of the national Academic Freedom Alliance. In 2013, he won the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award.
