Summer 2002
SMPA Names Dancy 2002 Shapiro Fellow
Former NBC Journalist to Teach Foreign Policy Class
John Dancy, former NBC News correspondent and
four-time Emmy award-winner, joins the School of Media and Public Affairs
(SMPA) as the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow for the fall semester.
Recognized for his coverage both in Washington and overseas, Dancy will
offer a semester-long seminar entitled “Foreign Correspondents
and Foreign Policy.”
“Dancy is not only a well-known and respected journalist, but a
true student of the media and an accomplished teacher. We can’t
wait to bring him together with our students,” says Professor and
SMPA Interim Director Jarol Manheim of the appointment.
In his 30-year career at NBC News, Dancy covered every major beat in
Washington and served twice as a foreign correspondent, based in Berlin,
London, and Moscow. Dancy reported on four wars for NBC: the 1973 Middle
East war, the 1974 Cyprus war between the Greeks and Turks, the beginning
of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, and the 1994 struggle between Russian
Army troops and Chechen rebels.
In Washington, Dancy was senior White House correspondent during the
Carter administration, covered Congress during the Reagan years, and
was chief diplomatic correspondent during the Bush administration. As
congressional correspondent, Dancy covered the Iran-Contra hearings.
He also anchored “NBC Nightly News,” “NBC News at Sunrise,”
and “Meet the Press.”
On retiring from NBC in 1996, Dancy was named a fellow at Harvard University’s
Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy, and
from 1997 to 1998, he taught journalism at Duke University. Most recently,
Dancy was a visiting professor of communications and director of international
media studies at Brigham Young University.
Dancy received the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for Excellence
in Broadcast Journalism, the Overseas Press Club’s Citation for
Excellence, the Janus Award for business reporting, four national Emmys,
and was the first television correspondent to receive the prestigious
Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress. He attended
David Lipscomb University, and graduated in 1959 from Union University
in his native Jackson, TN.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
