Fred Turner (born April 4, 1961) is an American academic. He is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, having formerly served as department chair.
Before joining Stanford as an associate professor, Turner taught communication at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University, an M.A. in English from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of California, San Diego. In 2015, he was appointed as Harry and Norman Chandler Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Stanford.
Before joining academia, Turner worked as a journalist for over ten years writing for The Boston Phoenix and Boston Sunday Globe, among others.