Communication scholar G. Thomas Goodnight has joined the Annenberg Public Policy Center for the spring 2017 semester as a visiting scholar.
Goodnight, who was director of Doctoral Studies at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism from 2003 to 2013, noted that he shares interests with APPC director Kathleen Hall Jamieson and others at the policy center, including the roles of communication in public policy and in science.
Among the projects Goodnight will be working on at APPC is one titled “Theodore Roosevelt: Inventing the American Century,” an examination of how Roosevelt “placed a democratic stamp on global empires” in his early 20th century travels in Africa, Europe, and South America. Another project, said Goodnight, who has developed a course in nonprofits and fund raising, involves laying the groundwork for a civic engagement project this summer in Uganda, where he will participate in building a network of libraries for rural communities.
Goodnight, a senior fellow for the Public Diplomacy Center at USC, has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Communication & Journalism, and worked with communication faculty building a doctoral program at Católica University, in Santiago, Chile. In 2014 he received the NCA Distinguished Scholar Award, and in 2013, the Alta Argumentation Senior Scholar award. In 2006, the International Society for the Study of Argument accorded him recognition for lifetime contributions. He has been named one of the top five scholars in the area of argumentation over the past 50 years. For more on his background, see the USC site here.
