Dr. Paul D. Gelpi is a Professor of Military History and serves as the War Studies Department Head at the Command & Staff College. He joined the faculty of the Command & Staff College in 2007 and was promoted to Professor in 2010. He served as the Electives Program Coordinator from 2007 to 2009 and as the Operational Art Course Director from 2009 to 2012. In 2012, he became the Communications Program Coordinator, and in 2020, a Co-Coordinator of the Gray Scholars Program. Since 2011, has taught in the College of Distance Education and Training’s CSC Distance Education Program. He has also held positions with several institutions of higher learning and serves on the adjunct faculty of the School of International Service at American University.

Dr. Gelpi is a U.S. historian whose principal scholarly interests are U.S. military history, primarily aviation history and airpower theory, and the history of culture and ideas in the Early Republic and 20th-century America, especially the Cold War era. He earned his Ph.D. in history from The University of Alabama, and his M.A. and B.A. in history from the University of New Orleans. He contributed an essay – “In Defense of Liberty: The Battalion d ‘Orleans and Its Battle for New Orleans” – to The Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory (Louisiana State University Press, 2016); and his more recent publications include, “It’s Not Either/Or but How: A War Studies Approach to History in PME,” with Bradford A. Wineman, Marine Corps Gazette (November 2022). His article, “To Answer the Question of Power Projection: General O.P. Weyland, USAF and the Origins of ‘Flexible Response,’ 1954-1960,” is in revision. He has, as well, published articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, and scholarly reviews on U.S. and military history; and presented papers at conferences and lectured in the United States and abroad.