Hamid Mowlana (, Hamid Molana, born in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iran) is an Iranian-American author and academic. He is professor emeritus of international relations in the School of International Services at American University in Washington, D.C. He was an advisor to the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Early life Mowlana was born into an educational and scholarly family. His grandfather, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Muhammad Mowlana, was a leading Islamic jurisprudent (faqih) and a community leader. His great uncle, Haji-Mirza Hassan Roshdieh, was a founder of modern educational and teaching methods in Iran. He is a descendant of the Iranian mystic poet, Qasim-i Anvar (1356-1433), and his ancestry dates back to Imam Musa al-Kazim (745-799) in the early Islamic history.Zahra Nazari and Ahmad Pishgahzadeh, Editors, A Bibliography of Hamid Mowlana, Third Edition, Ketabdar Publications, Tehran. 2019 (ISBN 978-600-241-224-9), p. 12.
At the age of twenty-six, after the completion of his Ph.D. degree at Northwestern, he served as editor-in-chief of Kayhan daily in Iran in 1963."Kayhan Man Returns From U.S. With Ph.D.," Kayhan International (Tehran), December 15, 1963, p. 3. However, he resigned from that position shortly and returned to the United States in pursuit of an academic life.
Education and academic career Mowlana was founding director of the International Communication Program in the School of International Service at American University from 1968 to 2005. He has also served as a visiting professor or guest scholar in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He was instrumental in establishing the first degree program in international and intercultural communication studies. He obtained his B.S. in economics in 1959 and earned his M.S. in journalism in 1960 and his PhD in communication and political science in 1963 from Northwestern University. Furthermore, he served on the faculty of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville from 1965 to 1968 before moving to American University in Washington, D.C.Bob Miller, "Iranian Gave Up Editor’s Job to Teach at U-T (University of Tennessee), The Knoxville News-Sentinel, June 5, 1966, p. 13.
In 1963 Mowlana discovered the well preserved and original copy of the first Iranian newspaper called Kaqaze Akhbar, published in Tehran in 1837, in the files of the British Museum Library in London and came a cross further evidence of the paper's existence in the files of the Royal Asiatic Society, also based in London, and thus changed the beginning of Iranian journalism history to fourteen years earlier - from 1851 to 1837."Scholar Reveals: Iran Had Its First Newspaper in 1837", Kayhan International (Tehran), August 1968, p. 3.
Between 1950s and 1970s, he has contributed articles on international affairs to a number of American media organizations including The Miami Herald (Knight Newspapers), The Sacramento Bee (McClatchy Newspapers), and has collaborated with ABC, NBC, and CBS on a number of public affairs programs.Hamid Mowlana, "Iran After the Shah: Military Will Fail," The Miami Herald, January 14, 1979, p. E1.; Hamid Mowlana, "Where Once There Was One Cold War, Long Ago, Now There Are Three," The Sacramento Bee, March 19, 1967, p. 5.; Hamid Mowlana, "Iran’s Past, Future Viewed as Pages in World History," Ft. Lauderdale-News, November 18, 1958, p. 11. In 1961-1962 Mowlana was a panelist on ABC-TV in Chicago and in 1967 he was the moderator of a television public affairs series called "The Foreign Media" on NBC. He has testified before Congressional committees on international issues."A Review of U.S. Participation in UNESCO: Hearings and Markup Before the Subcommittees on International Operations and on Human Rights and International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives, Ninety Seventh Congress, First Session of H. Res. 142, March 10, July 9, and 16, 1981," U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1982, pp. 207-235.
Mowlana has worked for UNESCO in Paris and is a former president of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).Hamid Mowlana, "Paradigmatic Debates, Theoretical Diversity, and the IAMCR: A Historical Perspective," in Yoshitaka Miike and Jing Yin (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory, New York, NY: Routledge, 2022, pp. 42–60. He wrote regularly for Kayhan daily, one of the main leading newspapers in Iran during the 1990s and 2000s. As of 2019 Mowlana's bibliography listed over 1400 printed works (books, book chapters, journal articles, book reviews, and magazine and newspaper articles).Zahra Nazari and Ahmad Pishgahzadeh, Editors, A Bibliography of Hamid Mowlana, Third Edition, Ketabdar Publications, Tehran, 2019 ( )
Mowlana has served on the editorial board of a number of scholarly and scientific journals. He was a founding editor of the Journal of International Communication and Journal of Intercultural Communication & Interactions Research. He was also a contributing editor of the Journal of Communication as well as the mass media editor of Intellect of the Society for Advancement of Education. His 1986 book, Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Communication, was selected as "communication book of the year" by American Professional Librarians.
Mowlana received a number of awards including the University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Other Professional Contributions in 1993, the International Communication Association's Award for Outstanding Research in 1977,International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, 1977, International Communication Association Handbook for the Conference, U.S.A., 1977. American University's School of International Service Award for Outstanding Contribution to Academic Development in 1980 and 1988 and for Thirty Years of Distinguished Leadership and Scholarship in 1998, and the Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2000.Unger, Mike. "Mowlana Stepping Aside, Not Fading Away." American Weekly (American University). 15 November 2005, p. 5. And American Men and Women of Science: A Biographical Directory—The Social and Behavioral Sciences. R.R. Bowker Company, New York and London, 1968, p. 1141; also 1973 Edition, p. 1761. He was also the recipient of the International Studies Association's Distinguished Senior Scholar Award in International Communication at its 43rd Annual Conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2002.International Communication Distinguished Senior Scholar Panel in Honor of Hamid Mowlana, Dissolving Boundaries: The Nexus Between Comparative Politics and International Relations. 43rd Annual ISA (International Studies Association) Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 22–27, 2002.
Mowlana was honored by the Iranian universities and academies for his life achievements and was designated nationally in Iran as an "Eternal One"—"Chehrehaye Mandegar" in 2003.The Everlasting People—Chehrehaye Mandegar: Praising Notable Scientists, Culturalists, and Contemporary Artists of Iran, Edited by Mahmoud Asadi, Gooya Publisher, Tehran, 2010 (). On the Persian tradition honoring noted scholars he was named as an honorary advisor to the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Mowlana's scholarly works extend over a number of disciplines including political science, economics, sociology, communication and philosophy. He is best known for his "integrated theory of communication and international relations",Mowlana, Hamid. Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations (Second Edition). London: Sage Publications, 1997, pp. 23-39. his "five dimensional model of human communication",Mowlana, Hamid. "Human Communication Theory: A Five-Dimensional Model." Journal of International Communication, 25(1), 2019, pp. 3-33. and his "monistic-emancipatory framework"Mowlana, Hamid and Wilson, Laurie J. The Passing of Modernity: Communication and the Transformation of Society. New York: Longman, 1990, pp. 70-75. of socio-economic development. His theoretical works on "communication as cultural ecology"Mowlana, Hamid. "The New Global Order and Cultural Ecology". Media, Culture and Society, 15(1), 1993, pp. 9-23. and "Islamic communication ethics"Mowlana, Hamid. "Theoretical Perspective on Islam and Communication," China Media Research, 3(4), 2007, pp. 1-9. Also see: Mowlana, Hamid. "Communication Ethics and the Islamic Tradition," in Communication, Ethics, and Global Change, edited by Thomas W. Cooper, with Clifford G. Christians, Frances Ford Plude and Robert a White, White Plains, New York, Longman, 1989, pp. 137-146.; Mowlana, Hamid. "Civil Society, Information Society, and Islamic Society " in Information Society and Civil Society: Contemporary Perspectives on the Changing World Order, edited by Slavic Splichal, Andrew Calabrese, and Coli Sparks, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1944, pp. 208-232. have been widely published.
Honorary advisor On August 19, 2008, the Islamic Republic News Agency, reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had appointed Mowlana as his advisor, asking Mowlana to help with the objectives of his government in "providing justice, friendship, serving the society, and promotion of public life status."President appoints professor Mowlana as advisor, (Ahmadinejad website), August 19, 2008, accessed March 25, 2010
Major publications
Books Mowlana, H. (1971). International Communication: A Selected Bibliography. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Mowlana, H. (1985). International Flow of Information: A Global Report and Analysis (Reports and Papers on Mass Communication, No. 99). Paris, France: UNESCO. Mowlana, H. (1985). International Flow of News: An Annotated Bibliography. Paris, France: UNESCO. Mowlana, H. (1985). International Flow of Information: A Global Report and Analysis. Paris, France: UNESCO. Mowlana, H. (1988). Development: A Field in Search for Itself. Leicester, England: International Association for Media and Communication Research. Mowlana, H. (1996). Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mowlana, H. (1997). Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations (2nd ed.). London, UK: Sage. Mowlana, H. (2011). Islam and the Crises of the Contemporary World. Tehran, Iran: Elmi & Farhangi. Mowlana, H., & Wilson, L. J. (1988). Communication Technology and Development. Paris, France: UNESCO. Mowlana, H., & Wilson, L. J. (1990). The Passing of Modernity: Communication and the Transformation of Society. White Plains, NY: Longman.
Edited books Mowlana, H. (Ed.). (1989). Aspects of the Mass Media Declaration of Unesco (International Association for Mass Communication Research, Occasional Papers, No. 9). Budapest, Hungary: Hungarian Institute for Public Opinion Research. Mowlana, H., & Frondorf, H. M. (Eds.). (1992). The Media As a Forum for Community Building. Washington, DC: School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Mowlana, H., Gerbner, G., & Schiller, H. I. (Eds.). (1992). Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in the Persian Gulf—A Global Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Mowlana, H., & Levinson, N. (Eds.). (1991). Telecommunications and International Relations: An East–west Perspective. Washington, DC: School of International Service, American University. Mowlana, H., Trezise, J., & Stovall, J. (Eds.). (1980). Watergate: A Crisis for the World—A Survey of British and French Press Toward an American Political Crisis. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press. Gerbner, G., Mowlana, H., & Nordenstreng, K. (Eds.). (1993). The Global Media Debate: Its Rise, Fall, and Renewal. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gerbner, G., Mowlana, H., & Schiller, H. I. (Eds.). (1996). Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of Media Means for America and the World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.