Pat J. Gehrke is associate professor of Communication and Rhetoric in the Speech Communication Program and the Department of English at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century (SIU Press, 2009), as well as more than a score of articles, essays, and chapters on communication ethics, public argument, political rhetoric, and philosophy of communication.
Gehrke’s latest research on democracy, public rhetoric, and emerging technologies was supported by a National Science Foundation grant on nanotechnology and intuitive toxicology. In pursuing the question of how democracy might be possible in modern America he has developed innovative methodologies for empirical studies of public argument and the conduct of public engagement while retaining a strong rhetorical, ethical, and philosophical foundation.  He is currently the editor-elect of The Review of Communication, is a past chair of the National Communication Association’s Communication Ethics Division, and was the founding chair of the Southern States Communication Association’s Ethics and Philosophy of Communication interest group.