William Anthony Donohue (born July 18, 1947) is an American Roman Catholic layman who has been president of the Catholic League in the United States since 1993.
Life and career
Donohue was born in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. He began his teaching career in the 1970s working at St. Lucy's School in Spanish Harlem. In 1977, he took a teaching position at La Roche College in McCandless, Pennsylvania. In 1980, he received his doctorate in sociology from New York University. Donohue is divorced and has two adult children from his marriage.
His first book was The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union. He became associated with the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he is an adjunct scholar.
While Donohue was in college in New York, Virgil C. Blum, a Jesuit at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, founded the Catholic League to counter anti-Catholicism in American culture. Blum died in 1990; in 1993, Donohue became the organization's director.
Donohue publishes The Catalyst, the Catholic League's journal. He formerly served on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. He serves on the board of advisers of the Washington Legal Foundation, the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, Catholics United for the Faith, the Ave Maria Institute, the Christian Film and Television Commission and Catholic War Veterans. He received the 2005 St. Thomas More Award for Catholic Citizenship from Catholic Citizens of Illinois.
In 2022, Donohue was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Ave Maria School of Law. He also gave the commencement address to the graduating class.
Activism
Donohue campaigns against what he perceives as the discrimination and defamation of Catholics and Catholicism. In doing so he has targeted a diverse array of organizations and individuals in entertainment, politics, and the arts. His work has produced divergent assessments. Legatus Magazine, the monthly publication of an organization for Catholic business executives, wrote:
USA Today once characterized Donohue, reporting that, "Donohue serves as Santa to his membership of 350,000 and Scrooge to those who run afoul of him." In 2000, an editorial in America, a Jesuit magazine, noted Donohue's bi-partisanship and willingness to break ranks with Republicans who aligned with him on most issues: "once he was cheered by Catholic neo-conservatives for attacking the media, the entertainment industry and pro-choice groups, now he was excommunicated as a loose cannon because he was shooting at their allies. Mr. Donohue's refusal to be controlled by either party is one of his most attractive qualities." One critic described him as an "identity politics ambulance chaser" and another said he represented a "right-wing publicity mill". Others found that his defense of Catholicism sometimes crossed into attacks on other groups, and he has been accused of homophobia or even "anti-gay bullying" and antisemitism.
Free speech
In 2015, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took responsibility for a terror attack on Charlie Hebdo that killed 17 people and wounded 12 in Paris, including the editor of Charlie Hebdo, who had been on an Al-Qaeda hit list. Commenting on the attack, Donohue wrote an article titled "Muslims are right to be angry":
In 2015, Donohue said on Fox News, "Self censorship is the friend of freedom" and that free speech should not permit "obscene portrayal of religious figures". Hugh Hewitt, a conservative Catholic talk show host, called Donohue "an embarrassment" to Catholics for his statement, saying "You blamed the victim before their bodies were cold" and "You are standing over the bodies of twelve dead people, including two policemen, one yesterday and one today, who knows who else is going to get killed in France during the course of this thing, and you are saying they were justified because they were insulted".
However, author Timothy J. Gordon observed that "Donohue came prepared to defend his statement in a logical and genteel (at least initially) manner" while Hewitt sounded "beleaguered and clearly intellectually overmatched." Gordon concludes that "one remains unconvinced that outfits like Hewitt or Fox News—throughout all their abuse of Donohue, as well as their full-hearted self-congratulations for their own stance, last week—will deal with Islam in any more subtle or sophisticated a way than Donohue."