Roderick P. Hart holds the Shivers Chair in Communication and is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Former dean of the Moody College of Communication and founding director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, Hart is the author or editor of eighteen books, the most recent of which is American Eloquence: Language and Leadership in
the Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 2023).

Hart has been named a Fellow of the International Communication Association, a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association, and received the Edelman Career Award from the American Political Science Association. He was a 2015 Annenberg Resident Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2018 Shorenstein Resident Fellow at Harvard University. He has received grants from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Exxon Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, McDermott Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Hatton-Sumners Foundation.

He has published over 200 articles and papers and lectured at more than a hundred colleges and universities. He received the University of Texas/Co-Op Career Research Excellence Award in 1999 and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at U.T Austin in 2000.