Before joining Annenberg, Goodnight taught doctoral courses in Northwestern University's Rhetoric Program in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, Criticism, Argumentation, and the Public Sphere.

Having directed 28 dissertations, he has been accorded career awards in Rhetoric and Communication Theory by the NCA and been named among the five top scholars in argumentation of the last 50 years by the AFA. Additionally, Professor Goodnight has taught Organizational Communication at the Master's level, and his undergraduate courses include seminars in the Rhetoric of War, Science Advocacy, Risk Communication, and an introduction to the field. A regular contributor to the Quarterly Journal of Speech, former editor of Argumentation and Advocacy, director of the 12th Alta Conference on Argumentation, Goodnight is a co-founder of the NU-University of Amsterdam graduate exchange. His current research interests include deliberation and postwar society, science communication, argument and aesthetics, public discourse studies, and communicative reason in controversy. Professor Goodnight is a CPD Faculty Fellow.