Professor Loch Johnson, "American Foreign Policy in a World Both Uncertain and Dangerous"

Dr. Loch Johnson, Regents Professor, University of Georgia, is a distinguished academic, the author of 30 books and over 200 articles on US Foreign Policy and Intelligence. A former Congressional staffer, he has been a visiting scholar at Yale and Oxford.  

Loch Kingsford Johnson is the Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, as well as a Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is the author of over 200 articles and essays; and the author or editor of over thirty books on U.S. national security, including: Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States (Oxford, 2018); National Security Intelligence (Polity, 2017); American Foreign Policy and the Challenges of World Leadership (Oxford, 2015); The Essentials of Intelligence (Praeger, 2015); A Season of Inquiry Revisited: The Church Committee (Kansas, 2015); and The Threat on the Horizon (Oxford, 2011).

Professor Johnson served as special assistant to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1975-76); as a staff aide on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1976-77); as the first staff director of the Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (1977-79); as a senior staff member on the Subcommittee on Trade and International Economic Policy, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives (1980); and as special assistant to Chairman Les Aspin of the Aspin-Brown Commission on the Roles and Missions of Intelligence (1995-96). He was the Issues Director in a presidential campaign (1976); and served as a foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 re-election campaign (co-authoring the Presidential Briefing Book on Foreign Policy used during the presidential debates).

Professor Johnson has won the “Certificate of Distinction” from the National Intelligence Study Center in Washington, D.C.; the “Studies in Intelligence” Award from the Center for the Study of Intelligence in Washington, D.C.; the “Best Article Award” from the Century Foundation’s Understanding Government Project; and the V.O. Key “Best Book” Prize from the Southern Political Science Association (APSA). He has served as secretary of the American Political Science Association, and is currently the chair of its Intelligence Studies Organized Group; and he has served as president of the International Studies Association (ISA), South. Professor Johnson is the senior editor of the international journal Intelligence and National Security and is on the editorial advisory board for other journals, including Foreign Policy Analysis. In 2008-09, he was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, and is now on the Phi Beta Kappa National Board for the Visiting Scholar Program. He has been a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Yale University, as well as at Oxford University. In 2012, he was named the inaugural “Professor of the Year” by the consortium of fourteen universities in the Southeast Conference (SEC). In 2014, he won the “Distinguished Professor” Award bestowed occasionally by the Intelligence Studies Section of the ISA; in 2015, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Intelligence Education in Washington, D.C.; and in 2017, the Faculty Service Award at the University of Georgia.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Professor Johnson received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Riverside. In post-doctoral activities, he was awarded an APSA Congressional Fellowship; has studied nuclear weapons policy at Harvard University and MIT; and was as a Carl Albert Fellow at the University of Oklahoma. At the University of Georgia, he led the founding of the School of Public and International Affairs in 2001.