Michael C. Davis

Davis has held numerous academic positions in several leading academic institutions, including the J. Landis Martin Visiting Professorship in Human Rights at Northwestern University, the Robert and Marion Short Visiting Professorship at Notre Dame University and the Frederick K. Cox Professorship at Case Western Reserve University, as well as the Schell Senior Fellowship in Human Rights at Yale Law School. He is a Senior Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia Studies at the University of Notre Dame and was a 2016-2017 Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, at the National Endowment for Democracy, where his research related to "resistance movements and constitutionalism in emerging democracies in Asia."[4] Professor Davis held the Wilson Center Residential Fellowship for 2018-2019 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC where his project title is "Reversing the Liberal Retreat and Establishing Constitutionalism in Emerging Democracies in Asia." His contributions to higher education were recognised in the "Award for Distinguished Service and Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Higher Education in India," awarded by the O.P. Jindal Global University in 2015 and in a "Certificate of Commendation" from the International Committee for the Red Cross, in regard to his contribution to the founding in 2011 of the Asian Regional Humanitarian Law Moot Competition.

In response to the Hong Kong Government's proposed draft legislation on national security under the Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23, which proposal raised worries on infringement of freedom of assembly and expression, Davis and eight other well known lawyers founded the Article 23 Concern Group (later renamed to Article 45 Concern Group) in 2003. The Article 23 Concern Group led the massive protest against the proposed legislation. The Hong Kong government later withdrew the legislative proposal after more than 500,000 people protested against the proposal, one of the largest protest since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.

Davis has advocated for political reform and universal suffrage in Hong Kong and around Asia for more than two decades. His prolific commentary have been seen in newspapers such as The New York Times, the South China Morning Post, the Washington Post, the Nikkei Business Magazine, Foreign Affairs, and the Apple Daily, as well as quasi-academic media such as Yale Global. He has appeared for interviews on crucial human rights topics in such broadcast media as CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio and NBC News. He expressed his sympathy for the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and argued non-violent civil disobedience did not undermine rule of law in Hong Kong,[5] that the government's loose interpretation of the Basic Law posed a greater threat. As a result of his numerous commentaries that year, Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondence Club awarded him the 2014 Human Rights Press Award for commentary.[6]