 After receiving a Department of National Defence fellowship to study under propaganda scholar Jacques Ellul at Bordeaux in 1979–1980, he started a philosophy and mass communications class at Carleton called "Truth and Propaganda", which has run annually ever since.One of the texts for this class is his 2002 book "Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion", which examines historical, ethical, and legal issues relating to propaganda.The revised second edition, released in 2013, examines the Bush administration's use of propaganda based on fear to persuade Americans to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq.