William Montgomery McGovern (September 28, 1897 – December 12, 1964) was an American adventurer, political scientist, Northwestern University professor, anthropologist and journalist.

[1][2] By age 30, McGovern had explored the Amazon and braved uncharted regions of the Himalayas, survived revolution in Mexico, studied at Oxford University and the Sorbonne, and become a Buddhist priest in a Japanese monastery.

McGovern graduated with the degree of soro, or Doctor of Divinity, from the Buddhist monastery of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto, Japan at age 20 before going on to study at the Sorbonne and University of Berlin.

There, in the bitter cold, he stood naked while a companion covered his body with brown stain, squirted lemon juice into his blue eyes to darken them.

Both men set off for Manchukuo to cover the invasion, only to see Thomas C. Quackenboss thrown into jail for taking photos in the streets.

He insisted that his pupils learn at least one or two kanji characters a week as he carefully illustrated them on a large chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall and explained their meanings as he drew them.

[7] During the postwar years, McGovern lectured on military intelligence and strategy at the Naval, Air and Army War Colleges.

Reputed to speak 12 languages and deaf in one ear, McGovern was an academic celebrity known for outlandish foreign dress and holding court in Northwestern's University Club.

McGovern's work on Asian history, in particular his interpretations of Chinese classical sources, was criticized by a reviewer in the journal American Anthropologist: "Dr. McGovern has converted this dry and perplexing source material into a racy and jocular chronicle where fact and fancy are so thoroughly mixed that a general reader could not possibly differentiate them.