On behalf of USC President Steven B. Sample, Provost C. L. Max Nikias has announced the appointment of Ernest James Wilson III to succeed Geoffrey Cowan as dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, effective July 1.

Wilson also will hold the Walter H. Annenberg Chair in Communications, which was established in 1984 in honor of the late Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg.

“Dr. Wilson’s work traces the intersections of information and communications media and societal power, especially the ways contending groups negotiate to shape the diffusion of the Internet and other new media,” Nikias said. “His analysis of the role of ‘information champions’ in Brazil, China and Ghana has been called a model of social science scholarship.”

Wilson is the ranking senior member of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, having been named to the board under President Bill Clinton and renamed by President George W. Bush. In addition, he has been a pioneering author and researcher on the Internet and digital communication in developing countries.

Wilson's current scholarship focuses on the politics of global sustainable innovation in high-technology industries; on China-Africa relations; and the role of culture in U.S. national security policy. In 2006 Wilson published Negotiating the Net in Africa: The Politics of Internet Diffusion, co-edited with Kelly Wong. He is also the author of Information Revolution and Developing Countries (2004, MIT Press) and Diversity and U.S. Foreign Policy (2004, Routledge Press).

A native of Washington, D.C., Wilson has served in several policy positions at the national level: among them director of international programs and resources on the National Security Council at the White House (1993-94); director of the policy and planning unit in the Office of the Director, U.S. Information Agency (1994), and deputy director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (1994-95).

In accepting the position, Wilson said: “This is an exciting time for journalism and communication: national borders continue to erode with digital communication and our societies are experiencing accelerated diversification. There is now an important opportunity for scholarship and teaching in journalism and communication to help understand the convergence of technology, human initiatives and institutional relations.

“Under the leadership of Geoffrey Cowan, in the last decade the USC Annenberg School for Communication has built a tremendous reputation for insightful research and for convening engaged, enlightened social discourse, and I look forward to working with the faculty, students, alumni and staff to strengthen the school even further. I am very grateful to President Sample and Provost Nikias for naming me to this position.”

Wilson joins USC from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of Government and Politics and in the Department of African-American Studies. Wilson is also a faculty associate of the School of Public Affairs there. He holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in political science from UC Berkeley and a B.A. degree from Harvard College.

Wilson’s academic expertise includes public policy, leadership, information, communications technology, international relations, African studies and comparative politics. He has directed several major research projects concerned with the links between information infrastructure and society, including "The Impact of New Information Technologies on Conflict Management and Development in Africa," as part of the Leland Project on Internet Connectivity in Africa sponsored by the Agency for International Development (USAID).

Wilson was a visiting senior fellow for Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1992-93). Prior to joining the University of Maryland faculty in 1992, Wilson taught at the University of Michigan, serving as director of the Center for Research on Economic Development and as an associate professor of political science and an associate research scientist at the Institute for Public Policy Studies. From 1979 to 1981, Wilson was a member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty.

He has worked on related projects for the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. He has also been a principal investigator for such projects as "Leadership in the Digital Age" (Markle Foundation).

His work on China led to his testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (2006) and before a Congressional Committee, and he frequently consults and addresses senior professional audiences at United Nations agencies in the private and public sectors in the United States and abroad.

Wilson is a senior adviser to the Global Infrastructure Information Commission as well as co-director of the International Center for e-Leadership.

He has served in leading capacities on policy and research advisory bodies, including the Internet Policy Institute, the National Research Council's International Advisory Board, chairman of the Y2K Information Technologies Advisory Board of the National Research Council/NAS, chair of a joint project of the National Research Council and the Agency for International Development on "Evaluating the Possibilities for Conflict Prevention and Management" and as director, Study Group, "Information and Communications Advances and Investments in Africa," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. (1996-97).

Wilson is married to Francille Rusan Wilson, a labor historian and intellectual historian. They have two sons.