Evan A. Feigenbaum is a nonresident senior associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Based in Chicago, he is also a vice chairman of the Paulson Institute, an independent center, located at the University of Chicago, established by former Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics, Feigenbaum’s career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and all three major regions of Asia.
From 2001 to 2009, he served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia (2007–2009), deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia (2006–2007), member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific (2001–2006), and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, with whom he worked closely in the development of the U.S.-China senior dialogue.
During the intensive final phase of the U.S.-India civil nuclear initiative from July to October 2008, he co-chaired the coordinating team charged with moving the initiative through the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors and the Nuclear Suppliers Group and then to Congress, where it became the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. He negotiated agreements with the governments of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and also has extensive policy experience with North and South Korea and Japan. He received three individual and two group superior honor awards from the State Department.
Following government service, Feigenbaum was senior fellow for East, Central, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations as well as head of the Asia practice group and a director at Eurasia Group, a global political risk consulting firm. Before government service, he worked at Harvard University (1997–2001) as lecturer on government in the faculty of arts and sciences and as executive director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative and program chair of the Chinese Security Studies Program in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1994–1995) as lecturer of national security affairs and was a consultant on China to the RAND Corporation (1993–1994).
He is the author of three books and monographs, including The United States in the New Asia (CFR, 2009, co-author) and China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford University Press, 2003), as well as numerous articles and essays.
