McMaster, who earned his master of arts and doctorate in military history at UNC, was appointed as Trump’s chief in-house advisor on national security issues Monday afternoon, introducing him from his private resort, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.
“(McMaster) is a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience. He is highly respected by everybody in the military, and we are very honored to have him,” Trump told reporters.
History professor William Barney taught him in the 1990s.
“Like most of the West Point fellows, (McMaster) was an excellent student,” Barney said. “He was probably a tad more creative than the average ones.”
While at UNC, McMaster took classes with current UNC professor Wayne Lee, who was then a Duke University graduate student, in the cross-enrollment program.
Lee said McMaster was a friend, and he remembers him working diligently on a dissertation which was highly critical of the United States’ military in the mid-1960s for allowing themselves to be pushed into the war in Vietnam.
“He’s a very smart, energetic person,” Lee said. “He was working on his dissertation, and it was coming out very rapidly and very impressively.”
McMaster eventually adapted the paper into a book entitled “Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam,” published in 1997.