Professor Philip Seib, a noted scholar, writer and public intellectual, has been named Vice Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III announced the news today; Seib’s position is effective July 1.
“I look forward to working with Phil in his new role as Vice Dean,” Dean Wilson said. “I have already come to rely on Phil’s good judgment and superior leadership and management skills as part of his past roles here.”
Seib joined the USC faculty in 2007. He serves as a Professor of Journalism and Public Diplomacy, and Professor of International Relations. He is a past director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, an institution considered the gold standard of its kind. USC Annenberg is composed of a pair of schools, the School of Communication and the School of Journalism.
Seib’s combination of skills and experiences in both academia and industry, along with his areas of expertise in a variety of fields central to USC Annenberg’s mission, made his disciplines-spanning selection as Vice Dean an obvious choice. “Among my goals is to make sure that there is more common ground shared by the School of Communication and School of Journalism – that there is a real USC Annenberg presence,” Seib said. “We have a lot of talent, and sometimes people are hesitant to cross lines between the two schools. I’m going to encourage people to do more of that crossing of lines.” Added Seib: “I’ve been at Annenberg for eight years now; I’ve been teaching for more than 30 years. I’ve been working both on the journalism side, and, through my work in public diplomacy, on the communications side, so I have bridges built already in multiple directions, and now I’m interested in creating a large and broad bridge between the schools.”
As a faculty member, Seib's research interests include the effects of news coverage on foreign policy, particularly conflict and terrorism issues. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Headline Diplomacy: How News Coverage Affects Foreign Policy; The Global Journalist: News and Conscience in a World of Conflict; Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America into War; Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War; New Media and the Middle East (2007); The Al Jazeera Effect (2008); Toward a New Public Diplomacy: Redirecting U.S. Foreign Policy (2009); and Real-Time Diplomacy: Politics and Power in the Social Media Era (2012). Seib is also the editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication, co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy and co-editor of the journal Media, War and Conflict, published by Sage. Seib’s elevation to Vice Dean comes during an era of great imagination and invention at USC Annenberg. In recent years, for example, the school has opened the cutting-edge Annenberg Innovation Lab; launched the popular Media, Economics and Entrepreneurship initiative; experimented with wearable computing, augmented reality and 3-D printing; and emphasized creative collaborations across industries and disciplines. The USC US-China Institute and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy are among the school’s leading in-house international and policy programs. In Fall 2014, the School of Journalism will welcome its first cohort of nine-month Journalism M.S. students. This new degree will correspond with the grand opening of Wallis Annenberg Hall. This technologically transformative, 88,000-square-foot building located in the heart of the USC campus will feature a three-story media wall as well as professional-quality video, radio and vodcast studios and a digitally converged media center for the school's award-winning, student-run, online, broadcast television, documentary and radio news outlets and PR agency. USC Annenberg's current on-campus home, the modernist marvel designed by famed architect A. Quincy Jones, will remain an active academic building as well. Seib is the latest addition to USC Annenberg’s remade administrative leadership team. Previously, the school announced that on July 1, Prof. Sarah Banet-Weiser will become Director of the USC Annenberg School of Communication, and Willow Bay will become Director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. USC Annenberg Vice Dean Larry Gross, a professor and outgoing director of the School of Communication, is taking a sabbatical beginning July 1.
“Larry Gross has been a valuable contributor to the well-being of the School of Communication and to USC Annenberg as a whole,” Dean Wilson said. “We all look forward to his return in a year from sabbatical.” Dean Wilson also said: “USC Annenberg has a new building, a new program, and a new era. This is a great time to be a Trojan, and a great time to join us as we invent the future.”
About the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Located in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism is a national leader in education and scholarship in the fields of communication, journalism, public diplomacy and public relations. With an enrollment of more than 2,200 students, USC Annenberg offers doctoral, graduate and undergraduate degree programs, as well as continuing development programs for working professionals, across a broad scope of academic inquiry. The school's comprehensive curriculum emphasizes the core skills of leadership, innovation, service and entrepreneurship and draws upon the resources of a networked university in a global urban environment.
Contact: Anne Bergman, USC Annenberg, anne.bergman@usc.edu
