About Me

About Me

A. Trevor Thrall, Ph.D.

A quick rundown:

  • Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Go Blue!)
  • Married high school sweetheart > 30 years ago
  • Three awesome (thankfully grown) children
  • Two ridiculous dogs
  • Received Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1996 and spent most of the time since then professor-ing, think tanking, starting side hustles, and writing, writing, writing
  • Most delicious side hustle: co-founded the Wolverine State Brewing Company in 2007 - best beer made in Michigan hands down.
  • Retired from George Mason University in 2022 to live near the beach in North Carolina
  • Full-time “freedom hustler” now with my wife, running our family business as well as GetYourWritingDone.com

A slightly wordier version of my professional journey:

From 1995 through 1998 I was an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, my alma mater. You don’t know surreal until you find yourself in a coat and tie confronting students in the very same seats in the very same rooms you took classes just five years before…

After a five-year stint doing research and business-y stuff at the Michigan Virtual University, I taught from 2003 to 2010 at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 2010 to 2022 I taught at George Mason University where I got to do many cool things like direct the Biodefense graduate program and help create a new master’s program in international security, not to mention sit on about 50 dissertation committees - my favorite part of the job. Since 2015 I have been a Senior Fellow in the Defense and Foreign Policy department at the Cato Institute, though my (very likely) final publication for them was in June 2023.

The picture to the left is from one of my trips to Switzerland, where for many years I had the privilege of leading study abroad courses to the Université de Fribourg as part of its American College Program, run by my very good friend Andrej Lushnycky. Vive La Suisse!