Past Fellows

Fall 2017 Fellows and Visiting Faculty

Joan Shorenstein Fellows

Donna Brazile is the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) interim chair, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and author of the upcoming book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. She is a former syndicated newspaper and magazine columnist, and the former vice chair for civic engagement and voter participation at the DNC. Brazile is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a consulting, grassroots advocacy, and training firm based in Washington, DC. She was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2001.While at the Shorenstein Center, Brazile will write about understanding American democracy after the cyber-attack on the 2016 election.

Paper: Campaign 2018: Improving Cyber Literacy in Political Campaigns

Tyler Bridges, twice a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, is a freelance journalist based in New Orleans who reports on Louisiana politics for the Baton Rouge/New Orleans Advocate, and also The Washington Post and Politico Magazine. He is the author of three books on Louisiana politics (the most recent, published in December 2016, is Long Shot), a 2011-12 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and was awarded Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Award in 2010 for his 10 years of foreign reporting in South America. While at the Shorenstein Center, Bridges will write about the role of conservative bloggers in debunking mainstream news stories.

Paper: “Alt-Lite” Bloggers and the Conservative Ecosystem.

Claes H. de Vreese is Professor and Chair of Political Communication in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam. He is the founding director of the Center for Politics and Communication, and the editor in chief of Political Communication. His research interests include the effects of news, public opinion and European integration, effects of campaigning on elections, referendums, and direct democracy. He has published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and frequently appears in news media. While at the Shorenstein Center, de Vreese will write about the changing nature of populist communication.

Paper: Political Journalism in a Populist Age.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the university’s Annenberg School for Communication. Jamieson is a co-founder of FactCheck.org and its subsidiary site, SciCheck, which monitors political speech for the misuse of science. She has authored or co-authored 15 books, including The Obama Victory and Spiral of Cynicism. While at the Shorenstein Center, Jamieson will explore the role of the press in reinforcing democratic discourse norms.

Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow

Tom Wheeler, Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow for the 2017-18 academic year, served as the Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama. For more than three decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services, experiencing the revolution in telecommunications as a policy expert, an advocate, and a businessman. As an entrepreneur, he started or helped start multiple companies offering cable, wireless, and video communications services. While at the Shorenstein Center, Wheeler will do research and teach a study group on the intersection of public policy and transformational technology.

Entrepreneurship Fellow

Wael Ghonim is a computer engineer, internet activist, and social entrepreneur. He is best known for his role in the Egyptian revolution in 2011, and he is the author of Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power. Ghonim worked for Google, heading their marketing and product operations in the Middle East. In 2015, he co-founded the online community Parlio, which was acquired by Quora. Ghonim was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in 2011, and received the 2011 Profile in Courage Award from the Kennedy Library Foundation. While at the Shorenstein Center, Ghonim will research the impact of social media algorithms on political and social discourse, and meet with students.

Paper: Transparency: What’s Gone Wrong with Social Media and What Can We Do About It?

Visiting Fellow

Kinsey Wilson is a senior advisor to the President and CEO of The New York Times and previously held dual masthead titles as Editor for Innovation and Strategy and Executive Vice President for Product and Technology. Before his work at the Times, he oversaw NPR’s worldwide news gathering, programming and digital operations as EVP and Chief Content Officer. Previously, as Editor-in-Chief of usatoday.com and Executive Editor of USA TODAY, he helped define the standards for online journalism through coverage of major news events including the 2000 presidential election, 9/11, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. Wilson will work with the Center on its new single-subject news project, as well as other initiatives around new and emerging business models for news. He will visit the Center twice per semester.

Visiting Faculty

E.J. Dionne, Jr. will be the William H. Bloomberg Visiting Professor with a joint appointment at Harvard’s Divinity School, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard Kennedy School, affiliated with the Shorenstein Center. Dionne writes about politics for The Washington Post. He is also a government professor at Georgetown University and a frequent commentator on politics on NPR, ABC, and MSNBC. His new book, One Nation Under Trump, co-authored with Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, will be published in September 2017. Dionne will teach a course entitled Religion in America’s Political Conscience and at the Ballot Box.

Andy Burness, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, is founder and president of Burness, a mission-driven global communications firm supporting nonprofits. Before starting his firm, Burness was the primary spokesperson for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and served as public information officer for the President’s Commission on Medical Ethics. Burness will teach a course entitled Strategic Communications for Policy Change.

Andrew Rosenthal, Visiting Murrow Lecturer of the Practice of Press and Public Policy, is the former editorial page editor for The New York Times, a role he held for nine years. He was previously the assistant managing editor and the foreign editor for the Times, and served as the national editor for six months in 2000, supervising coverage of the presidential election and the post-election recount. Rosenthal will teach a course on race and media in the U.S.