Herbert Jack Rotfeld
Scholar, Educator, Iconoclast
Professor Emeritus
Special Advisor to the Graduate School
Auburn University, Alabama  USA
Hav'too, D.Og., published author
⟹ For marketing elective courses, important syllabi standard language for textbooks, learning goals & trigger warnings
⟹ A Jewish Christmas Tale, including maybe-footnotes of composers of holiday music & Yiddish translations.

Biographic note

Author of essays, commentary & literature reviews on
link Teaching, higher education and other campus illusions
link Business practices against the consumers' interest
link Marketing abused: serving the wrong consumer benefits
link Marketing myths and common misunderstandings
link Marketing regulation and self-regulation
link Doing & publishing research: authors, editors and reviewers
link Conference discussants & other bystanders
link Businesses' too-common production orientationAmerican Academy of
          Advertising (link)


Special distractions
PowerPoint Crimes, a storyboard of Presentation Guidance from a Charisma-Challenged Geriatric Professor. 

→ A University Pandemic Teaching Guide for managing teaching & students during COVID-19 infection dangers in 2020.

The Suicide of Ad-Supported Television, a MediaNewsDaily commentary of MediaPost.com
Adventures in Misplaced Marketing sold by ABC-Clio/Greenwood 

→ Analysis of the inherent limits to the power of business (& advertising) self-regulation, J of Public Policy & Marketing, 11 (Spring 1992): 87-95 

Fear Appeals and Persuasion: Assumptions and Errors in Advertising Research, J of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 11 (#1, 1988): 21-40

The Textbook Effect: Conventional Wisdom, Myth, and Error in Marketing, J of Marketing, 64 (April 2000): 122-6

A Pessimist's Simplistic Historical Perspective on the Fourth Wave of Consumer Protection, J of Consumer Affairs, 44 (Summer 2010): 423-9

→ Discourse on why campuses should have Advertising in Communications: Home Is Where the Scholars Live, J of Advertising Education, 23 (#1, 2019): 53-59
The Stealth Influence of Covert Marketing and Much Ado About What May Be Nothing, J of Public Policy & Marketing, 27 (Spring 2008): 63-8

The Pragmatic Importance of Theory for Marketing Practice, J of Consumer Marketing, 31 (#4, 2014): 322-27link to hoverboards in class

The Advertising Regulation & Self-Regulation Issues Ripped from the Headlines with (Sometimes Missed) Opportunities for Disciplined Multidisciplinary Research, Journal of Advertising, 38 (Winter 2009): 5-14

Toward a Pragmatic Understanding of the Advertising & Public Policy Literature, J of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 29 (Spring 2007): 67-80

The Compatibility of Advertising Regulation and the First Amendment--Another View, J of Marketing & Public Policy, 1 (1982): 139-47

How I Met the Late Howard Gossage, on the disk companion for The Book of Gossage, 2nd Edition

→ 2012 assessment of Auburn University's Tiger Transit bus stops' impact on traffic & pedestrian safety

Annual Report Guidelines, The Irascible Professor (October 29, 2012)

→ Last J. of Consumer Affairs editorial, Parting Perspectives from an Aging Editor (& thanks for all the fish), 45 (Fall 2011): 539-46

"Why join the AAUP-Auburn chapter" recorded for new faculty in 2013


Bearing witness to students' education

PowerPoint Crimes, Guidance from a Charisma-Challenged Geriatric Professor
Syllabi standard language for textbooks, learning goals & trigger warnings
Not Serving Higher Education's Growing Slacker Segment
Adventures in Misplaced Mentoring

How to Fail a Course   

Special people
Kim Rotzoll (1935-2003) was my teacher through multiple college degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, my guide to life as a scholar, and the sage who patiently explained to many how an educator must be conscious of more than assessing how many pedantic details students memorized. A professor & head of the UIUC Department of Advertising, then dean of the College of Communications, his important directive for any faculty in a profession-named degree program was that "We must keep in mind we are educating students for their last job, not training them for their first."  Consumers, People and Kim, Journal of Consumer Affairs 38 (Winter 2004): 355-8
Ivan Preston in ItalyIvan Preston (1931-2011) was a professor of advertising at University of Wisconsin-Madison where I was not a student, but we were frequent contact by phone and mail during my years of graduate study. I traveled to his home to discuss (and "defend") my doctoral dissertation before I defended the work to my committee in Urbana, Illinois. He published his research and analysis where he thought it could influence people who read it, even though law journals were not the usual outlets for colleagues in his department. His professional life was a proud exemplar of the difference between faculty who publish research to meet a job requirement versus true scholars like him who would hunt for answers to interesting questions wherever the search might lead. Researchers, Scholars and Ivan, Journal of Consumer Affairs 45 (Summer 2011): 358-64

Herbert Jack Rotfeld
Professor Emeritus
Special Advisor to the Graduate School
Hargis Hall
Auburn University
Auburn, Alabama  36849
         rotfehj@auburn.edu

Copyright 1990-2024 Herbert Jack Rotfeld
Auburn University