Robert Horwitz

 “Giving a voice to people who had no voice”

One of the most important aspects of living in the United States is our ability to have Freedom of Speech and the power to have political reforms in a democracy.  How would you feel if the minority population in your country inhibited your ability to communicate?
Robert Horwitz is a professor at the University of California San Diego in the Communication Department who is passionate about the law and justice.  He graduated from Brandeis University in 1982 with a Ph.D. in sociology.  His research and teaching at UCSD has change throughout the years.  He started out working on government regulation involving markets and communication industries, which led to him being invited to help with restructuring telecommunications in South Africa, lastly he switched gears to revisit his sociological roots regarding neo-conservatism and Christian rights in the Republican party.   Horwitz is passionate about teaching and partially practices the Socratic Method to get his students to engage in open dialogue with one another.  From Fall 2008 through Spring 2011, Horwitz was the DOC Co-Director where he fought to have more Judicial based classes offered in Thurgood Marshall College.  It was important for him to pay homage to Thurgood Marshall, the namesake of the college and Judge responsible for passing the Brown v. Board of Education case, because of social movements that affected people’s justice in the law. 
In addition to his success at UCSD, Professor Horwitz was invited to help reconstruct the South African government for a year in 1995-96 which he says is one of his biggest accomplishments.  Horwitz was a part of the bigger picture, gave a voice to the voiceless and helped to restructure a country that gave power to the few and ignored the injustices of the many. He wrote two books about the issue which are titled The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications and Communication and Democratic Reform in South Africa.
His latest book, America’s right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party touches more on the history of the American Conservative movement from World War II to the present.  This book is “a much sexier topic that more people are interested in” and will be available in Spring of 2013!