Martin Kaplan, Senior Advisor

Director of the Norman Lear Center
Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, is a research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, where he holds the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society.

He has been a White House speechwriter; a Washington journalist; a deputy presidential campaign manager; a Disney studio executive; a motion picture and television producer and screenwriter; and a radio host.

He graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in molecular biology, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon, president of the Signet Society, and on the editorial boards of the Harvard Crimson and Harvard Advocate. As a Marshall Scholar, he received a First in English from Cambridge University in England. As a Danforth Fellow, he received a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.

He was a program officer at the Aspen Institute; executive assistant to U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest L. Boyer; chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale; deputy op-ed editor and columnist for the Washington Star; visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution; and a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and on the CBS Morning News. As deputy campaign manager of the Mondale presidential race, he was in charge of policy, speechwriting, issues, and research. Recruited after the 1984 election by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, he worked at Disney for 12 years, both as a studio vice president in live-action feature films, and as a writer-producer under exclusive contract.

He has credits on THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, starring Eddie Murphy, which he wrote and executive produced; NOISES OFF, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which he adapted for the screen; and MAX Q, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for ABC.

He was the host of So What Else Is News?, a nationally-syndicated program on Air America Radio, which examined media, politics and pop culture. He has also been a regular commentator on the business of entertainment on the public radio program Marketplace. Today he is a regular featured blogger on The Huffington Post and a weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

He is editor of The Harvard Lampoon Centennial Celebration. 1876-1973; co-author (with Ernest L. Boyer) of Educating for Survival; and editor of The Monday Morning Imagination, and What Is An Educated Person?

At USC he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Media & Politics, Campaign Communication, and Entertainment.