SDSU School of Communication to host inaugural Berman Institute Distinguished Lecture

The San Diego State University School of Communication will host its first annual Berman Institute Distinguished Lecture featuring Walid Afifi, professor and associate dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. in Storm Hall West 011. Admission is free and open to the public.

Afifi will deliver a lecture titled “My life will always be uncertain: Overcoming the freeze response to chronic uncertainty.”

"This is the first-ever endowment-funded lecture series in the history of the School of Communication,” said Heather Canary, director of the School of Communication. “Dr. Afifi is a multi-disciplinary scholar who conducts community-engaged research on chronic uncertainty, primarily working with refugee and marginalized communities."

“Sanford Bergman believed fervently that more competent communication could change the world,” said Brian Spitzberg, senate distinguished professor emeritus. “Walid Afifi has demonstrated a career working all 3 major academic sides of this objective: in research, in teaching, and in service.”

Afifi studies the experience of uncertainty and its impact on information seeking, decision-making, and well-being. That work resulted in the publication of the Theory of Motivated Information Management, and is currently being extended to the context of communities experiencing chronic uncertainty through the development of the Chronic Uncertainty Framework. Afifi is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and a past president of the National Communication Association. 

The Berman Institute Distinguished Lecture Series is funded by the Sanford I. Berman Institute for Effective Communication and General Semantics, which is dedicated to the study of language and behavior within the context of human societies. Among the objectives of the Institute are to serve as a critical examiner and barometer of social and public discourse and to provide a forum within which ideas about communication effectiveness may be developed, preserved, and disseminated.

For more information, visit the PSFA Events Calendar.