447 CHAPTER 29 George Gerbner and the Anti-Fascist Tradition of Communication Research Victor Pickard INTRODUCTION George Gerbner was one of the most politically engaged and public-facing communication scholars for nearly half a century, remaining active well into the 2000s. His work continues to hold profound relevance for many of the media- related challenges facing us today. This chapter provides an overview of his academic career, specifcally connecting it to the history of IAMCR, an inter- national body of which Gerbner was a key member. To bring this context to light, I draw from the extant biographical and archival records, including men- tions of Gerbner in presidential addresses, newsletters, and bulletins from IAMCR’s digital archives. 1 Together, these materials offer a compelling view of Gerbner’s engagement as a public scholar in general and his involvement with IAMCR in particular (Fig. 29.1). Sketching key themes from this historical narrative, this chapter is a prelimi- nary analysis of what I hope will become a much longer treatment of Gerbner’s research tradition within a broader critical intellectual history of the feld of 1 Archives are available at https://iamcr.org/digital-archive. Accessed 15 June 2022. V. Pickard () University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: victor.pickard@asc.upenn.edu © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Becker, R. Mansell (eds.), Refections on the International Association for Media and Communication Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16383-8_29