Bruce Lannes Smith

Bruce Lannes Smith (11 December 1909 in Webster Groves , Missouri - 1987 ) was an American political scientist and communication theorist ,and also a Propaganda specialist. His primary research focus was with the various uses and techniques of propaganda and persuasion employed by governments that were considered "enemy states" of the United States. He taught among others at Michigan State College. After the Second World War he was involved with the research of persuasion and questioning the methods used by the Nazi propaganda theorist Franz Six had entrusted.

Life

Smith was a student of Harold D. Lasswell and in 1933 earned a Ph.D. in political science and economics at the University of Chicago in Illinois. From 1933 to 1936 he was a graduate student and 1934-1936 Research assistant at the city's Department of Political Science. From 1938 to 1941 he worked as an Instructor of Economics at the New York University ; 1942-1943 he was a lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC.After leaving American University he again went to work in Chicago, where he would later become Instructor, at the Social Science Division and Research Associate. He took on a number of posts throughout his academic career among these many posts he was to become Instructor to the US government one of his students was Morris Janowitz, who was one of his keen undergraduates students, Janowitz was a senior propaganda analyst of the Organization and Propaganda Section at the U.S. Department of Justice from (1941–43).Smith also accepted an academic appointment at the University of Chicago From 1939 to 1944[2]. He was also Associate Editor of the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.

From 1941 to 1944 he worked as an analyst of the Organization and Propaganda Analysis Section at the United States Department of Justice War Division. He was mainly concerned with countermeasures to curb anti-democratic propaganda. 1943-44 he was Senior Intelligence Officer of the Foreign Economic Administration and in addition to other social scientists,he was a main research analyst with involvement at the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)(which would later become the CIA) in which their main specialty was to study the effects of mass Persuasion on a mass audience. Subsequently, he was Attaché and US Political Advisor for the Federal Republic of Germany at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in France. In 1945 he was involved in the search for Nazi propaganda theorist Franz Six and was apparently involved in his actual interrogation after his capture. From 1946 to 1948 he was Chief of the Department Information Control Division at the Office of Military Government for Germany (US) in Berlin.

After the Second World War he worked as a lecturer again. And in 1949-1950 he was associate professor at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) at the State Department in Washington, DC, but had to leave the post in the McCarthy era because of its supposedly "left-liberal" sentiments. From 1950 to 1963 he was then appointed associate professor of political science at Michigan State College in East Lansing. In 1951 he became editor of the journal International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA).

Smith was married to Chitra M Smith a member of the Bureau of social science research, and they co-authored together a book published by the Rand corporation on Political warfare. Smith was also a member of the American Political Science Association . He has published in journals such as the International Social Science Bulletin, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journalism Quarterly and Psychological Bulletin. In the 1970s, Smith was author of an article concerning the keyword Propaganda in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the uses,structure and organization of propaganda and persuasion (political or otherwise) aimed toward a mass auidence,which still stands to this day. His later research focused on the science of Political parties, Public opinion , International Relations and Political behavior.

Writings

• with Harold D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Casey: Propaganda and Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1935th
• with Harold D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Case: Propaganda, Communication, and Public Opinion; A Comprehensive Reference Guide . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1946th
• with Chitra M. Smith: International Communications and Political Opinion: A Guide to the Literature . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1956th
• Indonesian-American Cooperation in Higher Education . Institute of Research on Overseas Programs, Michigan State University., 1960

Literature

• Thyme Bussemer : propaganda. Concepts and theories . With a foreword by Peter Glotz , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005. ISBN 3-8100-4201-3 , S. 169 (Curriculum Vitae).