Samuel Walker

Sam Walker is a widely quoted expert on issues of civil liberties, policing and criminal justice policy. He is the author of 14 books on those subjects, which have appeared in a combined total of 39 different editions. He has been interviewed in every major media outlet in the United States and around the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS/Frontline, CNN and others.

His book, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama, won the Langum Prize for the Best Book in American Legal History for 2012. Walker is Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he taught from 1974 to 2005. He received a Ph.D. in American history from Ohio State University in 1973.

In November 2018, Sam was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Division on Policing of the American Society of Criminology.

And in October 2018, Sam was presented with the Academic Freedom Award by the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska (AFCON). The award recognized his public protest of a new policy by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents that significantly restricted freedom of expression on the four University of Nebraska campuses.

Walker is perhaps best known for his work on police accountability (including two books and two reports on “Driving While Female”) and for his definitive history of the American Civil Liberties Union, In Defense of American Liberties, which was first published in 1990 and issued in a revised edition in 2000 by Southern Illinois University Press. He was a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s National Working Group on Sexual Offenses by Police Officers.

A few of Sam Walker’s many books