Monday, October 5
4 p.m. – Conversation with Ian Rosenberg and Professor Emeritus Don Downs and Q&A
5:30 p.m. – Reception
Pyle Center, AT&T Lounge
Please join us for an engaging conversation on the importance of an independent and impartial media to the proper functioning of a free and democratic society. Lawyer and author Ian Rosenburg will sit down with Prof. Emeritus Donald Downs, a leader in the areas of free speech and academic freedom as the two discuss Rosenberg’s latest book, Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody and the broader responsibilities media in the United States have to informing the electorate with honest and non-partisan reporting.
Welcoming remarks will be delivered by Dean Dan Tokaji, a leading authority in the field of election law, voting rights, free speech, and democratic inclusion.
This event is sponsored by the Wisconsin Exchange, the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy, the Elections Research Center, the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
About the Speakers
Ian Rosenberg
Media lawyer, author and adjunct associate professor at Brooklyn College
Ian Rosenberg is a media lawyer who has specialized in First Amendment, libel, and intellectual property law for over 25 years. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Brooklyn College. Rosenberg graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with distinction and Cornell Law School magna cum laude. He is the author of The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms; Free Speech Handbook (art by Mike Cavallaro), a nonfiction graphic novel; and Terrible Stuff Damaging Everybody: The True Story of Lies and Libel in Dominion v. Fox.
Professor Emeritus Donald Downs
During his long and distinguished career at UW–Madison, Donald Downs was the Alexander Meiklejohn Professor of Political Science, and an affiliated professor of Law, and Journalism at UW-Madison. He co-directed and co-founded the University’s Wisconsin Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy (CSLD) from 2007 to 2015. The Center is dedicated to instilling critical knowledge and understanding of the core principles, institutions, and processes of liberal democracies, and to the advancement of genuine intellectual diversity on campus. Downs is also the former director of the University’s Legal Studies Program and its Center for the Study of Law, Society, and Justice (2004-2007). In 1996 Downs helped found the independent and non-partisan faculty group, the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, one of the nation’s leading campus academic freedom and free-speech groups.
Dean Dan Tokaji
Dan Tokaji is the Fred W. and Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. A leading authority in the field of Election Law, Dean Tokaji’s recent scholarship addresses the challenges facing democracies around the globe, including the free speech issues surrounding digital disinformation, the need for trustworthy electoral institutions, and the role of law schools in strengthening democratic governance. A former civil rights lawyer, he has brought many free speech, racial justice, and voting rights cases over his career.