Zoltán Fehér is a diplomat-scholar. He is a 2021-2022 Predoctoral Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, a 2021-2022 Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow with the Notre Dame International Security Center at the University of Notre Dame, and a PhD Candidate (ABD) in International Relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. In 2020-2022, he is a World Politics and Statecraft Fellow with the Smith Richardson Foundation. Since 2017, he has been a Research Fellow at The Fletcher School’s Center for Strategic Studies.
From 2002 to 2015, he worked as a professional diplomat for his home country Hungary, serving as foreign policy analyst at the Hungarian embassy in Washington DC, and later as Hungary’s Deputy Ambassador and Acting Ambassador in Turkey. He holds a Master of Arts in Political Science and a Master of Arts in American History from Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), a Law degree (J.D.) from Pázmány Catholic University (Budapest), and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University.
He has taught International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Summer School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Fletcher School, Ivy League Summer Institute (at the Harvard Law School), and leading Hungarian universities. In 2016, he served as a teaching assistant to Joseph Nye at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2019, he taught his self-designed course What is Grand Strategy? at Tufts University’s Political Science Department. He has studied with Stephen Walt, Monica Toft, Richard Rosecrance, Robert Pfaltzgraff, Niall Ferguson, and Nicholas Burns.
Fehér is also an expert in geopolitical risk, working with Duco Advisors, GlobalWonks, and companies in the financial sector. In 2017-2019, he served as the Co-Chair of the Fletcher Political Risk Conference, the only political risk industry forum in North America.
He has been the recipient of the Vali Scholarship (Harvard Kennedy School), Bradley Fellowship, Provost Fellowship and Graduate Competitive Initiative Fellowship (Tufts University), Kittredge Research Grant (John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund), Taussig Fellowship in Honor of William Martel (Fletcher School), among other awards.
His dissertation, The Sources of American Conduct: U.S. Strategy, China’s Rise, and International Order, examines U.S. strategy vis-à-vis China between 1970 and 2020, focusing on how and why the United States ended up facilitating China’s rise. His theory has implications for understanding why established great powers often help the emergence of rising states that may over time become peer competitors.
He has published extensively on international relations and foreign policy, including four book chapters as well as several articles in academic, policy, and news outlets, including H-Diplo, Global Security Review, Bard Journal of Social Sciences, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Acta Doctorandorum, and Hungarian Review of Political Science. He writes a biweekly column on world politics for Hungarian political news site Azonnali.hu. His diplomatic work has been written on in the Washington Times, Forbes Magazine, Daily Iowan, Washington Diplomat, Diplomatic Pouch, Georgetowner, Diplomat Magazine, AnkaraScene, Issue Magazine, and Fraternity Magazine.
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