Dowd was one of the nominees of the Peace and Freedom Party for Vice President in the 1968 US presidential election.

[6] The party's presidential candidate that year was Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, who finished a distant fifth in the election.

During the protest-occupation of Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University in April 19, 1969, Dowd was sympathetic with the efforts of the  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who organized continuous picketing that day in front of the Hall's main entrance, in support of the African-American protesters in the building.

[7]  With Professor Dowd’s encouragement, the picketing was replaced around midnight, with about 20 volunteers who circled the building in a quiet vigil until morning.

[9] Dowd was the faculty sponsor of the West Tennessee Voters Project in Fayette County, Tennessee, that inspired a sizable number of Cornell students to become more active in civil rights work in the South one year after the gruesome murder of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Philadelphia, Mississippi.