The 2017 honoree was professor of English and cinema & media studies Peter Decherney. He holds a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication and an affiliation with the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at Penn Law School. He is the faculty director of Penn’s campus-wide Online Learning Initiative and director of the Cinema & Media Studies Program.

He is the author or editor of six books including Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet and Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction. He has directed two short documentary films: Filmmaking for Democracy in Myanmar and the virtual reality film Kalobeyei, about a refugee settlement in Kenya. Dr. Decherney is also a regular contributor to Forbes.

Dr. Decherney has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy to Myanmar. He is an award-winning teacher, whose free online course (a MOOC) on the history of Hollywood is available through the edX platform.