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Leonard Steinhorn Professor SOC | Public Communication

Additional Positions at AU
Affiliate Professor of History
Degrees
BA History, Vassar College; MA History, Johns Hopkins University

Bio
Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of Communication and an affiliate professor of History. His expertise includes American politics, culture and media; the presidency and presidential elections; political strategy and communication; recent American history; the 1960s; race relations in America. He is author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, co-author of By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race, and is currently writing a book on America in the 1960s. He has published in books, journals, the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Politico, The Hill, Political Wire, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Baltimore Sun, Huffington Post, Salon, History News Network, BillMoyers.com, World Financial Review, among others, and he was the founding editor of PunditWire, a site where political speechwriters commented on the news. For more than a decade he served as the political analyst for CBS News Radio, and before that he served ten years as the political analyst for FOX-5 News in Washington, DC. Steinhorn has appeared as an on-air expert in a number of documentaries, including CNN's The Sixties and 1968: The Year That Changed America, Superheroes Decoded on the History Channel, and The Kennedy Files on REELZ, and he also appeared in a DVD special feature on the baby boom generation for the final season of AMC's Mad Men. He has given hundreds of talks at home and abroad, and has lectured on politics and history for One Day University and the Smithsonian. Steinhorn was twice named AU Faculty Member of the Year, and he also was named Honors Professor of the Year in 2010. Before joining the AU faculty, he spent 15 years as a political consultant and speechwriter.

Teaching

Spring 2025

  • COMM-420 Topics in Mass Media: The Sixties in America

Fall 2025

  • COMM-301 Public Relations

  • COMM-640 Principles of Strategic Comm