Speaker Biographies
W. Lance Bennett
W. Lance Bennett (Ph.D., Political Science, Yale University) is Professor of Political Science and Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, where he also founded and directs the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement (www.engagedcitizen.org). The Center is dedicated to understanding how communication processes and technologies can enhance citizen engagement with social life, politics, and global affairs.The general focus of his work is how communication processes affect citizen engagement with politics. Publications include: Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2001, co-edited with Robert Entman); News: The Politics of Illusion, 7th ed. (Longman, 2007); and When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (University of Chicago Press, 2007, co-authored with Regina Lawrence and Steven Livingston). He has received the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award and Lectureship, and the Murray Edelman Career Achievement Award in Political Communication, both from the American Political Science Association.
Anna Everett
Dr. Anna Everett is Professor and former Chair of UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Film and Media Studies. She is also the former Director of UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Black Studies. Dr. Everett has published numerous books and articles including Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949; New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality (with John T. Caldwell), AfroGEEKS: Beyond the Digital Divide (with Amber Wallace), and Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. She has a new book just published entitled Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. She founded and edits the journal Screening Noir: A Journal of Film, TV and Digital Culture. She organized two AfroGEEKS conferences on race and new media technologies, in 2004: “AfroGEEKS: From Technophobia to Technophilia,” and in 2005: “AfroGEEKS: Global Blackness and the Digital Public Sphere” both took place on the campus of UCSB.
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Greenfield (B.A., University of Wisconsin; Law Degree, Yale Law School; Honorary Degree in Laws, Union College) is Senior Political Correspondent for CBS and formerly CNN's senior political analyst and a contributor to The Situation Room, American Morning and Paula Zahn Now.
His professional background includes: Legislative fellow, Office of Sen. Robert Kennedy, 1967-68; Assistant to NYC Mayor John Lindsay, 1968-70; Political consultant, Garth Associates, Inc. 1970-76; Lecturer, Columbia Law School, 1970-75 (approximate); Media analyst, CBS News, 1980-83; Political and Media Analyst, ABC News, 1983-97; Senior Analyst, CNN, 1998-; Host, "CEO Exchange" PBS, 2000-02, 2005-; and Syndicated columnist, Universal Press, 1981-96.
His books include: The Advance Man (with Jerry Bruno) (1971); A Populist Manifesto (with Jack Newfield) (1972); No Peace, No Place (1973); The World's Greatest Team (1975); Television: The First Fifty Years (1977); National Lampoon's Book of Books (1979); Playing to Win: An Insider's Guide to Politics (1980); The Real Campaign (1981); The People's Choice (1995); and Oh, Waiter: One Order of Crow (2001). Mr. Greenfield has been writing magazine and newspaper articles for 40 year-plus, for Harpers, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, New York, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, National Lampoon, and many others.
He has won four “Emmys”, and the Quill Award for Meritorious Journalism. He also was a Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media Industry Fellow during Spring 2006, when he taught two courses at UC Santa Barbara – Political Media in the United States (A Historical Survey), and A Seminar on Ethics in Politics.
Roderick Hart
Roderick Hart (Ph.D., Communication, Pennsylvania State University) is the Shivers Chair in Communication and Professor of Government, and Director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Participation, University of Texas at Austin. His area of special interest is politics and the mass media and he is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us (Oxford University Press, 2005). He is also the author of DICTION 5.0, a computer program designed to analyze language patterns. He was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Research Fellow of the International Communication Association, a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association, and the National Scholar of the Year Award from Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and has received the Murray Edelman Career Award from the American Political Science Association.
Dana Mastro
Dana Mastro (Ph.D, Communication, Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. Her research investigates the role of the media in processes of stereotype formation and application. More specifically, her work documents depictions of Latinos on English and Spanish-language television and assesses the extent to which exposure to these images influences stereotyping and racial/ethnic cognitions as well as a variety of intergroup and identity-based outcomes. Her most recent projects examine the effects of exposure to racially stereotypical TV programs on social perceptions and voting intentions; the relationship between exposure to TV news coverage of Latinos and judgments about Latinos in society; and the influence of both positive and negative media portrayals of Latinos on consumers’ self-concept and esteem.
Christopher McAuley
Christopher McAuley, Associate Professor in the Department of Black Studies, received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Political Science. Dr. McAuley's areas of research are northern and southern African Politics, world systems theory, Black intellectual history, Caribbean and Latin American political economy and economic history of the Americas. In 1990 he received the Ford Foundation and Center for African-American and African Studies (CAAS), University of Michigan Summer Research Fellowship in Ghana. He won the UCSB Distinguished Teaching Award during 2004-2005. Christopher McAuley has been a professor in the Department of Black Studies since 1995. Professor McAuley has a long record of excellent teaching at UCSB that balances his commitment to intellectual history, social change and concern for the campus and global communities.
Melvin Oliver
Melvin Oliver (Ph.D., Sociology, Washington University) is the Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences, and Professor of Sociology, at UC Santa Barbara. Professor Oliver brings to bear over 25 years of experience in both philanthropy and higher education. Prior to coming to UC Santa Barbara he was Vice President of the Asset Building and Community Development Program at the Ford Foundation. This program helped to build human, social, economic, environmental, and interpersonal assets among poor and disadvantaged individuals and communities throughout the world. From 1978 to 1996 he was a member of the faculty at UCLA. A popular and effective instructor, he has won numerous awards for teaching. In 1994, he was named the California Professor of the Year and won the Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching award from the UCLA Alumni Association. Oliver is an expert on racial and urban inequality and poverty, and has authored (with Thomas M. Shapiro) Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, which received the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association, the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the award for the outstanding book on the subject of human rights from the Gustavus Myers Center.
Linda L. Putnam
Linda L. Putnam (Ph.D., Communication, University of Minnesota) is Professor in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara. Previously she was a Regent's Professor and the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University, where she served as Department Chair and Director of the Program on Conflict and Dispute Resolution in the Bush School of Government and Public Service (1998-2003). Her research focuses on negotiation and conflict management in organizations, discourse studies in organizations, and gender and negotiation. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association, and the 2005 recipient of the Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the International Communication Association, the Charles H. Woolbert Award for Original and Innovative Research from the Speech Communication Association in 1993, the Best Article Award from the International Communication Association in 2005. Dr. Putnam is a past president of three professional societies--the International Communication Association, the International Association for Conflict Management, and the Council of Communication Associations.
Ronald E. Rice
Ronald E. Rice (Ph.D., Communication Research, Stanford University) is the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication in the Department of Communication, and Co-Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media, at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Rice has been elected divisional officer in both the International Communication Association and the Academy of Management, elected President of the ICA (2006-2007), awarded a Fulbright Award to Finland (2006), appointed as Wee Kim Wee Professor of the School of Communication and Information (2007) and NTU University Professor (2008 and 2009) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and has served as Associate Editor for Human Communication Research, and for MIS Quarterly. He has co-authored or co-edited Public Communication Campaigns, The New Media: Communication, Research and Technology, Managing Organizational Innovation, Research Methods and the New Media, The Internet and Health Communication, Accessing and Browsing Information and Communication, Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement and Interaction, The Internet and Health Care: Theory, Research and Practice, and Media Ownership: Research and Regulation.
Michael Stohl
Michael Stohl (Ph.D., Political Science, Northwestern University) is Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara. Formerly he was Dean of International Programs (from 1992) and Professor of Political Science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Stohl's research focuses on organizational and political communication with special reference to terrorism, human rights and global relations. Dr. Stohl has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship for International Education Administrators in Japan and Korea in 1989, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship to lecture at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1983 and the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Year Fellowship in 1971-72. He was awarded Visiting Research Grants for collaborative research on terrorism at the State University of Leiden, The Netherlands, by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappeliijk Onderzoek, in May 1989 and May 1985. He was a member of the Search for Common Ground sponsored United States-Soviet Union Task Force on International Terrorism which met in Moscow and Santa Monica in January and September 1989.
John M. Wiemann
John M. Wiemann (Ph.D., Communication, Purdue University) is Vice Chancellor, Institutional Advancement, and Professor in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara. His areas of research interest include Interpersonal Communication, Communicative Competence, Intercultural Communication, and Dynamics of Interpersonal Relationships. He has been very active in the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association, a member of many journal editorial boards, and a Fulbright-Hays Senior Research Scholar, and winner of the Alpha Chi Omega UCSB Outstanding Professor Award. The Vice Chancellor's Office oversees the division's wide range of programs and activities designed to achieve broad levels of support—financial, political, and public support—for the goals and priorities of the campus.
John T. Woolley
John T. Woolley (Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Political Science, and formerly served as Faculty Advisor to the Provost, Acting Dean for Social Sciences, and Associate Dean. His current research focuses on change over time in the presidency and presidential use of unilateral action. Heis the author of Monetary Politics: The Federal Reserve and the Politics of Monetary Policy, and continues to be involved in research on the politics of monetary policy. He has collaborated with others in work addressing democracy and economic growth, and California environmental policy (activities of watershed management groups). Together with Gerhard Peters, Woolley has developed an extensive web-based resource on the American Presidency (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu), which is widely used by scholars and others interested in the presidency and American political history.
Henry T. Yang
Henry T. Yang (Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University) was named UC Santa Barbara’s fifth chancellor in 1994. He was formerly the Neil A. Armstrong Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where he also served as the dean of engineering for ten years. Dr. Yang is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has received a number of recognitions for his research, teaching, and public service, including five honorary doctorates and the Benjamin Garver Lamme gold medal, the highest honor from the American Society of Engineering Education. Most recently he was awarded the 2008 Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has served on scientific advisory boards for the Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, NASA, and National Science Foundation. He currently serves on the Association of American Universities executive committee, the Millennium Technology Prize selection committee, and the Kavli Foundation board, and is chairman of the board for the Thirty Meter Telescope project. Dr. Yang specializes in aerospace structures, structural dynamics, composite materials, finite elements, transonic aeroelasticity, wind and earthquake structural engineering, and intelligent manufacturing systems. In 2007 he received an honorary distinguished teaching award from UCSB’s Academic Senate.
