Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia and a Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is the author of over 200 articles, along with more than 30 books on U.S. national security, including Spy Watching (Oxford, 2017) and National Security Intelligence (Polity, 2017), released this year.

Professor Johnson has won an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship (1969-70), and has served as special assistant to chairman Frank Church on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Church Committee investigation of the CIA, 1975-76); on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1976-77); as the first staff director of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight (1977-79); as a senior staff member on the Subcommittee on Trade and International Economic Policy, House Committee on Foreign Affairs (1980); and as special assistant to chairman Les Aspin on the Aspin-Brown Commission on Intelligence (1995-96). He was the issues director in Senator Church’s presidential campaign (1976), and was a foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 re-election campaign. He is a consultant to several government agencies and committees.

Previously at the University of Georgia, he won the “Outstanding Mentor” Award from the Roosevelt Society in 2008; the “Teacher of the Year” Award from the Tate Society in 2002; the Owens Research Award in 1998; the Honors Program Honoratus Medal in 1997; the Sandy Beaver Award in 1987; the “Educator of the Year” Award from the Pandora Yearbook in 1986; and the Creative Research Medal in 1980. Professor Johnson was also selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 2009 (only the second UGA faculty chosen for this honor), and he is currently on the PBK National Board for Visiting Scholars. At the University of Georgia, he was inducted into the Sphinx Society in 2004 and the Blue Key Society in 2014.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Professor Johnson received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Riverside. At UGA, he led the founding of the School of Public and International Affairs, approved by the Board of Regents in 2001. He also led the establishment of the Service Memorial adjacent to the Miller Learning Center in 2005 and the placement of a statue on North Campus to honor UGA’s first president, Abraham Baldwin in 2012. He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Athens Regional Medical Center; he helped create what has become known as“Loch Johnson Relays,” an annual, regional high school track meet; and he led the SPLOST (Special-purpose local-option sales tax) campaign to finance the building of a new Cedar Shoals High School, along with the renovation of public schools throughout Clarke County.