Ernest James Wilson III is an American scholar. Wilson was the Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication, and Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California from 2007-2017. He stepped down as dean in June 2017 and was succeeded by Willow Bay. Dr. Wilson is the founder of USC Annenberg's , which is devoted to research, teaching and executive education on soft skills in the digital age. Through the Center, Dr. Wilson's most recent research focuses on critical workforce competencies and talent and skills development in the 21st Century. As a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, he currently is writing a book on utilizing competencies via the framework of Third Space Thinking.
Biography
Originally from Washington, D.C., Wilson obtained a B.A. from Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1970. From the University of California, Berkeley, he obtained an M.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1978 in Political Science. He began his academic career on the faculties of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At Michigan, he was Director of the Center for Research on Economic Development and an Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Public Policy Studies. In 1992, he joined the University of Maryland faculty, where he was a Professor and Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, holding a joint appointment in the Department of Government and Politics and in the Department of African-American Studies. From 1995 to 2002, Wilson was Director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University, and he remains a Senior Fellow of the Center today. In 2002, he received an appointment to USC Annenberg. Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, a joint project of USC Annenberg and the USC College’s School of International Relations, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. From 1993 to 1994, he was Director of International Programs and Resources on the White House National Security Council. In 1994, he was the Director of the Policy and Planning Unit, Office of the Director, U.S. Information Agency, and from 1994 to 1995, he was the Deputy Director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission. In 2010, he was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Demand Media, a U.S. Internet company that focuses on generating large amounts of low-cost content that is highly search engine optimized, and is often described as a content farm. In 2017, he joined the board of The Conversation US, a non-profit news site. He is the recipient of numerous research fellowships and awards, including an international affairs fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is married to Francille Rusan Wilson, Ph.D., a labor and intellectual historian. They have two sons.
Wilson has published two books: The Information Revolution in Developing Countries and Negotiating the Net in Africa. He co-edits the MIT Press series, The Information Revolution and Global Politics, and is a founding editor of the journal entitled, Information Technologies and International Development.
