Ron Greene
224 Church St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Ronald Walter Greene (Ron Greene) currently serves the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) as a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee. He formerly served as the Chair of the CLA Assembly (2023-2024), Chair of CLA's Council of Chairs (2016) and Co-Chair of CLAs Tenure and Promotion Committee (2024). For nine years, he was the Chair of of the Department of Communication Studies (2012-2021).
His research and teaching explores the ways institutions regulate and advocate communication to improve democratic decision making. He is particularly concerned with how the material forms of rhetorical practice (debate, discussion, and persuasion) guide institutional judgments in political, educational, and economic contexts. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the The Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association (NCA) and the Charles Woolbert Research Award from the National Communication Association. The Critical Cultural Studies Division of NCA and the American Forensic Association have also recognized his research to rhetorical and argumentation theory with article of the year awards. In 2026, he was awarded the University of Minnesota"s Outstanding Contribution to Professional and Graduate Education and was inducted in the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
He is the author of Malthusian Worlds: US Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis (Westview 1999, Ebook Routledge 2019, translated into Farsi by Mehdi Rezaei and Latif Partovi. Tehran: National Institute for Population Research, 2024). He is currently editing Arguing Democracy: Selected Papers from the 22nd NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation and has published articles in such journals as: Cultural Studies, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Argumentation and Advocacy, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, The Proceedings of the AFA/NCA Conference on Argumentation, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Cultural Critique. His website provides a more comprehensive account of his publications.
Dr. Greene is one of the founding organizers and former Chair of the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association (NCA) and has served in all the leadership roles of the Critical and Cultural Studies Division and the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division of NCA. He also served on Executive Board of the Rhetorical Society of America (2016-2020). He actively reviews work for disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals in rhetorical studies, argumentation studies, cultural studies, and the critical humanities.
Educational Background
- BA: Philosophy, University of South Carolina, 1986
- MA: Speech Communication: Rhetoric and Political Communication, Louisiana State University, 1988
- Ph.D.: Speech Communication: Rhetoric and Cultural Studies, University of Illinois, 1995
Specialties
- Political Communication; Debates; Civic Education
- Philosophy of Communication
- Rhetorical Theory
- Argumentation Studies
- Cultural Studies