{"id":571952,"date":"2023-10-25T12:21:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T16:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=571952"},"modified":"2024-03-26T11:54:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T15:54:15","slug":"jack-downey-2023-goergen-awards-winner-571952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/jack-downey-2023-goergen-awards-winner-571952\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Downey: Family tragedy channeled into a passion for social justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The associate professor of religion helps shape the perspectives of his undergraduates not only at the University, but also at area prisons.<\/span><\/h2>\n

Jack Downey<\/a>\u2019s commitment to social justice stems from a deeply personal experience. His father, John T. Downey, was a CIA operative who was shot down over Manchuria in 1952, during the Korean War, presumed dead for years, and held in prison for more than 20 years\u2014the longest-held prisoner of war in US history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After his release, Downey went on to marry a Chinese woman he met at Yale University. Jack, their only child, was born in 1980.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up with a father who had been incarcerated gave me an appreciation for what incarceration can do to a person,\u201d the younger Downey says. \u201cHe was in solitary confinement for half of those 20 years. His withdrawal of liberty has been a constant in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a major reason Downey, the John Henry Newman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Rochester<\/a>, has taught at correctional facilities as well as in college classrooms for more than a decade. He\u2019s part of the University\u2019s Rochester Education Justice Initiative<\/a> (REJI), which supports incarcerated students through a rigorous college degree-granting program that includes coursework in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Downey teaches at Groveland Correctional Facility during the spring semester and at Attica Correctional Facility in the fall.<\/p>\n

Although Downey only joined the University in 2019, his impact has already been felt on and off the River Campus. As Amina N\u2019Gambwa \u201921 says, \u201cProfessor Downey\u2019s class transformed the way I think about my own relationship with the world around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reluctant teacher finds his niche<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Downey didn\u2019t catch the teaching bug until the latter part of his doctoral program at Fordham University, when he was, in his words, \u201cforced\u201d to teach some classes. \u201cI have a healthy amount of social anxiety when it comes to public speaking,\u201d he says. \u201cIt didn\u2019t seem like it would fit my personality. But then I really took to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he looked younger than his years, Downey was often mistaken for being an undergraduate. \u201cI felt compelled to present myself in a way that was more authoritative,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I never could pull it off. It\u2019s not me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jack
Jack Downey, the John Henry Newman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies, is among the recipients of the 2023 Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2012, Downey landed at LaSalle University in Philadelphia; he had his first experience teaching at a prison soon after. That\u2019s how he met Joshua Dubler<\/a>, an associate professor of religion with Rochester\u2019s Department of Religion and Classics<\/a> and the founder and director of REJI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe asked him to come to LaSalle to give a talk about his first book, which was about a chapel in a state prison outside of Philadelphia,\u201d Downey says, referring to Dubler\u2019s book, Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison<\/em><\/a> (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). \u201cIt turns out the people he profiled were people I knew from my work in prison. We became fast friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubler eventually told Downey about an opening on the faculty at Rochester in 2019. The position appealed to him for two main reasons: it was an endowed chair in Catholic studies, and because Rochester had a program teaching incarcerated people. The results have been impactful.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack is a life-changing teacher, both for our traditional students on the River Campus and our incarcerated students at Attica and Groveland,\u201d Dubler says. \u201cHe\u2019s truly an exceptional teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

When classes on the River Campus moved online in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Downey adjusted to Zoom instruction as other faculty did. That fall, police body-camera video was released of Daniel Prude, a Black man who experienced a mental health crisis and died after an encounter with the Rochester Police Department<\/a> earlier that year. Protests grew in the city of Rochester amid a national reckoning with racial inequalities in the US criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

That fall semester, Downey was teaching RELC 284: Civil Disobedience via Zoom. \u201cThe only time I would see my students in person was at night, at the protests,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a very compelling time. Students were Zooming in to class outside a protest in front of the mayor\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of higher education in prisons<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Teach for the Rochester Education Justice Initiative<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The prison education program seeks committed University of Rochester faculty and graduate students to teach courses for incarcerated students in the 2024\u201325 academic year.<\/p>\n