Lance Strate

Lance Strate received his PhD in Media Ecology from New York University in 1991 and is presently Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City. He is also President of the Institute of General Semantics, and founder, past president, and board member of the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Strate is the author of 11 books, including Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited; Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition; Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions in the Human Lifeworld; First Letter of My Alphabet (his third poetry collection); and most recently, Not A, Not Be, & C. He has also co-edited 7 anthologies, and served as editor of the Speech Communication Annual, General Semantics Bulletin, and Explorations in Media Ecology. He is the recipient of the 2025 Sanford Berman Award for Teaching and the 2022 J. Talbot Winchell Award for Service from the Institute of General Semantics; the 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and the 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship from the Media Ecology Association; the 2019 Distinguished Research Fellow Award from the Eastern Communication Association; the 2019 Neil Postman Mentor Award and the1998 John F. Wilson Fellow Award for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication from the New York State Communication Association; and the 2024 Leadership in Listening Award and 2020 Outstanding Research Award from the Global Listening Centre.

Listening is the way in which we let others into our personal consciousness, taking in a part of them and making them a part of us. There are many ways in which we take what is exterior to ourselves and make it a part of our interiority, but none as intimate or as influential as listening. Listening is the signal and substance of I-You relationships, through which we form unities and communities that are far great than the sum of their parts, the otherwise isolated individuals that they are made from. Through listening, we are able to grow and evolve as human beings, as human societies, and as the human species.