Casper Native and Longtime International Diplomat to Serve as Visiting Professor at UW

A Casper native with a long career in international diplomacy will be the Milward L. Simpson Visiting Professor at the University of Wyoming during 2023-24.

Ambassador Thomas Dougherty, the Warburg Chair in International Relations at Simmons University since 2021, will begin his post this fall in UW’s School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies (SPPAIS). He will teach two courses: “Introduction to African Studies” and “America’s Forever Wars.”

“It means a great deal and for a variety of reasons,” Dougherty says of being named the Simpson Visiting Fulbright Professor. “When I was executive director of the Australian-American Fulbright Commission (2016-2021), I was very pleased to enter into a partnership with UW to bring distinguished Australian Fulbright scholars to Laramie as Milward L. Simpson Visiting Professors. It is an enormous honor for me now to serve as the Milward L. Simpson Visiting Professor myself.”

“Tom has been a great friend of the University of Wyoming and was instrumental in setting up our partnership with Fulbright-Australia,” says Stephanie Anderson, a professor and head of SPPAIS. “We are absolutely thrilled to have the ambassador teach for us, especially in this area of expertise -- Africa.”

This will not be Dougherty’s first foray into teaching at UW. As a lecturer, he taught “African Studies” undergraduate courses during 2020 and 2021.

A career diplomat, Dougherty was a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department from 1989-2016. He served in Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Washington, D.C. He was deputy chief of mission in Australia, serving at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra from 2013-16; was U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso from 2010-13; and directed Fulbright programs in several countries, including the very large program in Iraq, where he served as minister-counselor for public affairs during 2009-2010.

His extensive experience in Africa includes serving as acting deputy assistant director for West African Affairs from 2007-09; deputy chief of mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2004-07; and deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Malawi from 2001-04.

From 1989-2001, Dougherty was a public affairs officer in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Germany, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

Before joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Dougherty worked in international schools in Belgium and Switzerland, and he was a Fulbright grantee himself in Indonesia and Singapore in 1988. He is fluent in French, German and Italian and speaks basic Arabic.

He received his bachelor’s degree in American civilization from Brown University, followed by graduate work at the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, Italy, and nondegree coursework at the Foreign Service Institute, UCLA and Pepperdine University. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1987 to study the works of George Kennan.

With that collective world experience to share, Dougherty says, “Above all, I’d like students to develop a greater awareness of international affairs and how they affect us in various ways here in Wyoming. And should any of the students then consider pursuing international careers themselves, so much the better.”

When he is not in the classroom teaching, Dougherty plans to spend as much time outdoors as possible in Wyoming and visit friends and places throughout the state that “I have not had the chance to see in years,” he says.

Being back in Wyoming has given Dougherty time to reflect.

“It truly does seem full circle in many respects. My father had very little good to say about almost any politician but, as a young man in Casper in the 1950s, he had the chance to meet Milward Simpson. And he often said Simpson was a model of what a politician should be,” he says. “So, to find myself back in Wyoming as the Milward L. Simpson Visiting Professor really does feel like a full circle of sorts.”