Dr. Gary Kieffner
Adjunct Instructor
Dr. Gary L. Kieffner is an INSS adjunct instructor at UTEP. He earned a Ph.D. from UTEP and is a graduate of the Officer Candidate School, Indiana Military Academy. He specializes in ethics and governance, frontiers and borderlands (Oceania and Mexican-U.S.), gendered mobility relative to transnational material culture, contemporary world history, indigenist (Pacifika) methodology and praxis.
Dr. Kieffner has served many universities in the U.S. and abroad, teaching or advising thousands of undergraduate and graduate students in face-to-face, online or blended modalities, as well as in course development and administration. As a visiting assistant professor of ethics and governance, Kieffner collaborated with his cadre of academics recruited by universities in the Fiji Islands after the last military coup d’état, aiding transition of that nation’s authoritarian political and socioeconomic governance, to restore civil society and parliamentary democracy under a new constitution. After the regime suspended its “Public Emergency Regulations,” allowing public gatherings for the first time in years, Kieffner promptly reorganized and chaired the Suva Philosophy Club, convening the first public meetings in the nation. Months later, Kieffner served as “Submittee Number 1” among academics summoned to make suggestions for a new national constitution. All of Kieffner’s and his cadre’s suggestions were subsequently included in the first and final drafts of the 2013 Fiji Constitution, among the most progressive constitutions in the world. On these occasions and others, Kieffner and his colleagues helped to enable prerequisite conditions necessary for suspension of international sanctions and readmission of the Fiji Republic into active Commonwealth status.
Kieffner serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies (2005—present) and is the author or editor of many articles. Kieffner previously served in most branches of the U.S. armed forces for sixteen years, until 1996.
Classes Taught:
- INSS 1301: History and Security