Emil Dansker, Ph.D.

Emil Dansker is a 1948 Lincoln High graduate who has devoted a career to journalism as a reporter, editor, and educator. Attending Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in 1952 and a Master’s degree in 1953. His Doctorate degree in interpersonal and public communication was awarded by Bowling Green State University in 1978.

In his first assignment out of Northwestern, Dansker was a Marine Corps combat correspondent. Following military service, and for the next 15 years, he was a reporter and editor for newspapers in Illinois and Ohio. In the early 1970s he began teaching journalism at Bowling Green where he also was advisor to the student newspaper. In 1986 he moved to Central State University of Ohio, a historically black school, where he taught journalism and speech and managed the public radio station. He retired in 1996.

In Ohio Dansker also taught part-time at several universities and colleges including Cincinnati, Dayton, Findlay, Xavier, Wilberforce, and The Union Institute. He has led seminars on such topics as press coverage of the presidency, the politics of lobbying, and business ethics and the political process. He has done freelance writing for several national publications. He also studied at Hebrew Union College and was lay Jewish chaplain for 10 years at a hospital in Cincinnati.

Dansker has an interest in the political process and in history. He is cofounder and director of a long-term project to get students involved with the media at national political conventions and presidential inaugurations. As an editorial board member of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Dansker has written for its publications. He is a member of a group documenting the history of aviation in Greater Cincinnati and of a similar group studying the history of all forms of transportation in the area. His writings include a video documentary on the press coverage of the killing for four students by Ohio National guardsmen at Kent State University in 1970 and a similar documentary on press coverage of the embassy hostage crisis in Iran in the early 1980s. He has contributed sections to several books of a historical nature.

Dansker is a member of several professional, historical, military, and ethnic associations. His honors include emeritus retirement from Central State University, an award from the American Institute of Architects for his writings on urban design, and induction into the Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Dansker and his wife Donna, who reside in Cincinnati, have six children and 10 grandchildren.

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