Amit Schejter

Amit Schejter is Head of the Communication Studies department at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and Associate Professor of Communications and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy at the College of Communications of Pennsylvania State University.

Academic career

Schejter received his LL.B. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1986, his M.S. in mass communications from Boston University in 1991 and his Ph.D. in communication and information policy from Rutgers in 1995. In 1997 he joined the faculty at Tel Aviv University. Since 2004 he has been at Penn State.

Professional career

Between 1988-89 and 1992-93 Schejter served as bureau chief and senior advisor to Israeli ministers of education and culture Yitzhak Navon and Shulamit Aloni. Between 1993 and 1997 he was director of legal affairs and international relations at the Israel Broadcasting Authority and co-author of the Nakdi Report. In 2000 he was appointed vice president for regulatory affairs at Cellcom (Israel), where he attracted public attention when attacking the government's caving in to pressures of Bezeq, the national telco, refusing to undergo a polygraph test enforced on the corporation's senior management; and considering the new Channel 10's offer to serve as legal commentator.

Publications

He is the author of numerous academic articles, law review articles and book chapters on communication law and policy, which have been published in four languages. He is co-author (with Akiba Cohen and Dafna Lemish) of The Wonder Phone in the Land of Miracles: Mobile Telephony in Israel (Hampton Press, 2008) and author of Muting Israeli Democracy: How Media and Cultural Policy Undermine Freedom of Expression (University of Illinois Press, 2009). In 2007–09 he headed the "Future of American Telecommunications Working Group" (FACT), which produced the volume ... And Communications for All: A Policy Agenda for a New Administration (Lexington Books, 2009) and presented it to President Barack Obama's administration upon inauguration.