Bradley Rogers Carson (born March 11, 1967) is an American lawyer and politician who is the 21st President of the University of Tulsa.

[10] Carson studied at Jenks High School and Baylor University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

[11] As a Rhodes Scholar, Carson went to Trinity College, Oxford, and earned a second BA (which became an MA a few years later) in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.

According to The Almanac of American Politics, Carson had originally intended to attend Yale Law School, only to change his mind while at Oxford.

In 1997 Carson was selected as a White House Fellow, where he was assigned to The Pentagon as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

[12] After redistricting changed the political composition of his district to be much more favorable to a Democratic candidate, Carson was reelected in 2002 with nearly 75 percent of the vote.

In 2004, Carson did not seek reelection to the House, and ran for the open U.S. Senate seat that was being vacated by retiring Republican Don Nickles.

He easily won the Democratic primary, and after a tough campaign, lost the election to Republican Tom Coburn, his predecessor in the House.

[17] The Weekly Standard called him "The Perfect Democrat"[18] After the election, Carson wrote an article for The New Republic which was the subject of much discussion.

In December 2008, Carson left his post at Cherokee Nation Businesses to deploy to Iraq as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Navy.

[26][27] Carson had met Barack Obama in 2004 when they were both nominees of the Democratic Party for open seats in the United States Senate.

[28] Carson served as Obama's personal representative in the approval of candidates for delegates from Oklahoma to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

[31] On September 14, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Carson to serve as the General Counsel of the United States Department of the Army.

[38] As undersecretary, Carson led a number of pioneering initiatives such as the Department of Defense's "Force of the Future" reforms, the largest personnel changes to the military and civilian workforce in nearly 50 years.

This recognition was given after the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression aided Carson in revising the university's policies on speech and assembly.

[47] In late 2023, Carson announced he would be the co-founder and President of a new policy group, Americans for Responsible Innovation, dedicated to artificial intelligence.

[36] In 2017, Carson completed the Marathon des Sables, a 250-km ultramarathon in the Sahara Desert often called the world's toughest footrace.