Carl Thayer
Carlyle Thayer is an American scholar who has lived and worked in Australia for thirty-six years. He is a full professor of politics at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), one of Australia’s leading universities. UNSW works with the Australian Defence Department to provide a liberal and balanced education in a military environment.
Thayer began his career with UNSW in 1979 and taught first at The Royal Military College-Duntroon, Australia’s equivalent of West Point. In 1986, the UNSW assumed responsibility for all degree programs at the Australian Defence Force Academy and Thayer transferred to the new institution. All of the Academy’s undergraduate students are cadets and midshipmen but graduate studies attract international students from all over the world. For example, over half of Professor Thayer’s M.A. students are from Southeast Asia. He also supervises PhD students from Australia, India, Malaysia, Vietnam and the United States.
Professor Thayer is internationally known for his research and writing on Vietnamese politics and Southeast Asian security issues. His reputation has earned him a number of enviable postings. In 1992, he joined the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University (ANU) for three years as a senior research fellow. During this period Thayer served as an official UN observer for elections in Cambodia in 1993 followed by three months with the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. In 1999, Thayer was invited by the U.S. Department of Defense to join the senior faculty at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii for three years. In this position he taught senior defence and foreign affairs officials from forty-three countries. Upon return to Australia, Thayer was asked to coordinate Australia’s most senior military course at the Centre of Defence and Security Studies at the Australian Defence College for three years. Half of the student body was comprised of senior officials from the Asia-Pacific Region.
In 2005, Thayer was appointed C. V. Starr Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University where he taught a graduate course on Vietnam. On return to Australia he directed security studies at the Australian Command and Staff College which attracts a diverse student body from the Asia-Pacific. Thayer studied political science at Brown, earned an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale and a PhD in international relations from the ANU. He is the author of over 370 publications and is currently the foundation Frances M. and Stephen F. Fuller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University.