Public Service and Political Views
Downs was a special consultant to the United Nations for refugee problems from 1961–64 and served as Chairman of the Board of the United States Committee for UNICEF.
Downs wrote a column for Science Digest during the 1960s. He was Science Consultant to Westinghouse Laboratories and the Ford Foundation and an elected member of the National Academy of Science. He is a Board of Governors member of the National Space Society and was a longtime president and chairman of the predecessor National Space Institute. The asteroid 71000 Hughdowns is named after him.
The auditorium of Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio and the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University are named in his honor.
Downs has expressed public praise for many libertarian viewpoints. He opposes the U.S. "war on drugs". He did several pieces about the war on drugs and hemp. On his last 20/20 he was asked if he had any opinions of his own that he would like to express: he responded that marijuana should be legalized.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Downs
Famous quotes containing the words public, service, political and/or views:
“When I saw it I was so glad I could not speak. My eyes seemed too little to see it all.... I was a long time without speaking to my friend. To see me always looking and never speaking he thought I had lost my mind. I could not understand where all this could come from.”
—For the State of Maine, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)