Home Index
Brigadier General
Douglas J. Murray
Permanent Professor 1984–2007
Vice Dean of the Faculty 1990–1991
B.S., Georgetown University
M.A., University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
Doug Murray, the Academy’s 45th Permanent Professor, was born in 1943 in Audubon, New Jersey. He entered the Air Force in 1965 as a Distinguished AFROTC Graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Washington, DC. He served as a Titan II Missile Combat Crew member in the Standardization/Evaluation Division at McConnell AFB, KS, 1965–1969. He entered graduate school in the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, in 1969 and earned a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies in 1970. After six months as a student at the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Center, Lowry AFB, CO, Doug served as the Chief of the Operational Intelligence Branch, 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, Udorn, Thailand. In 1972 he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the USAF Academy. In 1974 he entered graduate school again at the University of Texas at Austin and earned his PhD in International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Defense Policy in 1979. Returning to the Academy in 1976 as an Associate Professor, he was named the Director of Comparative and Area Studies in the Department of Political Science. During this time he co-edited and wrote the first of three editions of Defense Policy of Nations published by Johns Hopkins. In 1980 he was assigned to the Pentagon as the Deputy Chief of the Secretary of the AF Staff Group. In 1983 he was selected to attend the National War College, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC. Upon graduation in 1984, he returned to the Academy, having been appointed the Permanent Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science. From July 1990 to December 1991 he served as Vice Dean of the Faculty. In 1994 during the Bosnian conflict he served as the Chief of the Staff Group Division, Plans and Policy Directorate, HQ US European Command, Stuttgart, Germany, where he led the effort to design and implement theater-wide planning, programming, and budgeting systems that later were approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for theater commands worldwide. Doug returned to the Academy in 1996 to again lead the Political Science Department and chair the Social Sciences Division. While serving in these positions, he chaired the Strategic Planning Staff of the Air Force Education and Training Review Council for HQ USAF that was responsible for drafting the first AF-wide education and training strategic plan. During this time he was selected for life membership in the Council on Foreign Relations. In collaboration with two others, he established the Dwight David Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies at the Academy in 2005. For more than 11 years he chaired the faculty’s Graduate Studies Committee. He was promoted to brigadier general and retired from the USAF in 2007.
Doug immediately assumed, and still holds, the position of Chief Academic Officer and Dean of Academics of the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, and he serves the State of New Mexico as its representative to the Alliance of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.