A scholar, military officer, and former government official, William Ruger is a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Ruger’s breadth of experience and study in domestic policy, intelligence, and national security strengthens Heritage’s work across a wide range of policy areas and helps expand the reach and influence of Heritage’s ideas in Washington and across the country.
Before joining Heritage, Ruger served in the Trump-Vance administration as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In that role, he was responsible for helping lead collaborative integration across the intelligence community and supported intelligence products for senior policymakers. Ruger was also responsible for the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), and the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (ATA), among other duties.
Before entering public service, Ruger was at the American Institute for Economic Research, where he was President from 2022 to early 2025. Before that, he was Vice President for Research and Policy at the Charles Koch Institute and Vice President, Foreign Policy at Stand Together. Ruger was previously an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Political Science at Texas State University and an adjunct Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.
Ruger is a veteran of the Afghanistan War and remains an officer (with the rank of Commander) in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Ruger was nominated by President Trump to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He was appointed by President Trump to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board at the U.S. Department of State in 2020, serving from 2020 to 2023.
Ruger earned his Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University and an A.B. from the College of William and Mary. His scholarship has appeared in a number of academic journals including International Studies Quarterly, Economics of Governance, Review of Political Economy, Civil Wars, and Armed Forces and Society. Ruger is the author of the biography Milton Friedman and co-author of two books on state politics, including the first seven editions of Freedom in the 50 States, a widely cited ranking of personal and economic freedom across the American states.
Ruger has written op-eds for numerous outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed frequently for television and radio, appearing on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Ruger is a regular public speaker and debater, including debates opposite the former UK Foreign Minister David
Lammy, General Stanley McChrystal, and journalist Josh Rogin. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ruger is a loyal follower of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins, and a proud husband and father of two upstanding young men.
