Georgetown Law Professor Laura Donohue and Professor Adam Levitin have been named the 2018 Williams Research Professors. The Williams Professorships, established through the generosity of Agnes N. Williams (L’54), recognize and support the scholarly activities of Georgetown Law faculty.

Two Williams Research Professors are appointed to three-year terms each year. Professor Chris Brummer and Professor Gregory Klass were named in 2017. The inaugural holders, Professors Kristin Henning and John Mikhail, were named in 2016.

“We are pleased to honor Laura and Adam with the 2018 Williams Professorships,” said Dean William M. Treanor. “Professor Donohue is transforming experiential learning for students of national security law, and Professor Levitin is a nationally recognized expert in bankruptcy and commercial law. With this recognition, they will continue their cutting edge research in these important fields — sharing their invaluable knowledge with the Georgetown Law community and with our students.”

Professor Laura Donohue, who joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 2009, writes on constitutional law, legal history, emerging technologies and national security law. She is director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law, and a director of the Center on Privacy and Technology. Her book The Future of Foreign Intelligence: Privacy and Surveillance in a Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2016), was awarded the 2016 IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. She also has written The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, Politics, and Liberty (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Law in the United Kingdom 1922-2000 (Irish Academic Press, 2007).

In November 2015, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court appointed Donohue as one of five amici curiae under the 2015 USA FREEDOM Act. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; and Reporter for the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section Task Force on Border Searches of Electronic Devices. She has served on the Board of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security and is a Senior Scholar at Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution.

Donohue obtained her A.B. in Philosophy (with Honors) from Dartmouth College; her M.A. in Peace Studies (with Distinction) from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland; her J.D. (with Distinction) from Stanford Law School; and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge, England.

Professor Adam Levitin, who joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 2007, specializes in bankruptcy, commercial law and financial regulation. He has previously served as the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, as the Robert Zinman Scholar in Residence at the American Bankruptcy Institute, as Special Counsel to the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board. Levitin frequently testifies before Congress on financial regulatory issues, making twenty-nine appearances since joining the Georgetown faculty.

Prior to joining Georgetown faculty, Levitin practiced in the Business Finance & Restructuring Department of Weil, Gotshal, & Manges and served as law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Levitin holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.Phil and an A.M. from Columbia University, and an A.B. from Harvard College. His scholarship has won several awards, including the American Law Institute’s Young Scholar’s Medal.