Downs Donald Alexander. Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus

Cambridge University Press, 2005. - 319 p.This book addresses a major problem in contemporary American higher education: deprivations of free speech, due process, and other basic civil liberties in the name of favored political causes. Downs begins by analyzing the nature and evolution of the problem and discusses how these betrayals of liberty have harmed the truth-seeking mission of universities. Rather than promoting equal respect and tolerance of diversity, policies restricting academic freedom and civil liberty have proved divisive and have compromised the robust exchange of ideas that is a necessary condition of a meaningful education. Drawing on personal experience as well as research, Downs presents four case studies that illustrate the difference that conscientious political resistance and mobilization of faculty and students can make. Such movements have brought about unexpected success in renewing the principles of free speech, academic freedom, and civil liberty at universities where they have been active, while their absence at some universities has caused a steady decline in the importance of these principles.
Donald Alexander Downs is Professor of Political Science, Law and Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, Oakland, California. He has written four previous books, including Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment, winner of the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award; and The New Politics of Pornography, winner of the Gladys M. Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association. Professor Downs has also published extensively in leading journals, encyclopedias, and professional books; lectured throughout the United States and in England and Scotland; and made numerous media appearances on radio and television to discuss issues of American politics and law.