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Monday, April 03, 2006
Ind. Law - Feature on IU Law-Bloomington Prof. Dawn Johnsen
The Indianapolis Monthly has a long feature story on IU Law-Bloomington professor Dawn Johnson. Some quotes:
She has been a civil-rights lawyer, a legal adviser to the White House and, through it all, an eloquent crusader for reproductive rights. Now a popular law professor in mostly pro-life Indiana, Dawn Johnsen is reemerging as a national voice in the abortion debate. Haven’t heard of her? You will. * * *Talking about abortion on CSPAN surely isn’t what Johnsen had in mind when she took a teaching job at Indiana University eight years ago. But the fact is, her expertise and experience have made her an indispensable source on the issue. After five years as legal director at the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) and then four years in the Office of Legal Counsel under Janet Reno, she came to Bloomington in 1998 to teach constitutional law to aspiring lawyers. And yet here she is, far from IU’s quiet limestone campus, back in the televised trenches of America’s ongoing abortion war while her sons and husband admire dinosaur bones at the Smithsonian. * * *
“I love Bloomington,” Johnsen says. “I love teaching.” She’s been in Indiana for the past eight years, and it doesn’t look like there’s much not to love. The attractive, cultured college town. A job relaying a passion—constitutional law—to a new generation of young minds. The flexibility to go on trips to speak, to publish, to linger over breakfast for two hours on a weekday morning. Moreover, IU loves her back.
She is exactly the type of professor law schools like to keep around: a graduate of one of the best law schools in the country, with a practical background in and out of court plus rare insights into the inner workings of a presidential administration. Johnsen contacted the school in the spring of 1997; she was teaching by August the next year. (She gave birth to her second son, Eric, in January 1999.)
A regular speaker on academic and legal panels, Johnsen’s work on both presidential power and reproductive rights continually garners national attention, especially of late, with her major specialties at the forefront of political debate. She’s an IU-based expert whose words and ideas are splashed all over the pages of newspapers, and a competent debater on national television.
“These organizations can go anywhere in the country to solicit experts,” says Lauren Robel, dean of the IU School of Law. “That they come here, to her, is really less a feather in our cap than in Dawn’s.” Johnsen enjoys a reputation as a professor whose seminars fill up fast, and whose Washington-insider connections bring some of the most noted legal minds in the field to campus.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 3, 2006 06:36 PM
Posted to Indiana Law