Gordon Stables is the director of the School of Journalism. A clinical professor with appointments in both the School of Communication and School of Journalism, Stables has been a member of the USC Annenberg faculty since 2002 and served in a number of roles.
As the School of Journalism director, Stables is responsible for the supervision and management of USC Annenberg programs in Journalism and Public Relations. He works closely with the school’s faculty and leadership to help guide the school’s research, teaching and service initiatives. His current research interests focus on the future of public news.
He previously served (from 2014–18) as USC Annenberg’s associate dean for student affairs. He worked with the Academic Advisement and Academic Services teams to help connect each students’ broader university and academic experiences.
From 2002–17, Stables served as the director of USC’s Trojan Debate Squad (TDS). Long known for its intercollegiate policy debate program, the squad expanded is programming under Stables’ leadership. Gordon helped incorporate community debate by partnering with the Los Angeles Metro Debate League. The TDS now also has a robust British Parliamentary debate program and an active debate campus series.
Stables embraces innovation in his classroom at USC as well. His teaching explores a range of approaches to the study of public argument. He teaches a rotation of courses that explore rhetoric, argumentation, debate, political communication, political deliberation, propaganda and global media.
Gordon is also active with outside professional argumentation consulting. He has worked with several television productions of debate events and provides news commentary for political campaign debates. He has been involved in the planning, judging or implementation of public debates in a number of settings, including with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and The Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center, The Environmental Protection Agency, the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, UCLA’s Hammer Theater, General (Ret)Tommy Frank’s IDebate Initiative, the TNT program King of the Nerds.
Contact Stables at commlead@usc.edu.