Evelyn Farkas

Education and background

Farkas obtained her B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, class of 89, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Career

Previously to her position at the Defense Department, she was a senior fellow at the American Security Project, where she focused on stability and special operations, counterproliferation and U.S-Asia policy.

In 2008, she served as executive director of the congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which published its report World at Risk, in November 2008. From April 2001 to April 2008, she served as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her issue areas included foreign and defense policy in Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command (policy and budget oversight), foreign military assistance, peace and stability operations, the military effort to combat terrorism, counternarcotics programs, homeland defense, and export control policy. Prior to assuming that position she served for four years on the faculty of the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University as assistant professor and then associate professor of international relations. She served in Bosnia for five months as a human rights officer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) during 1996, and as an election supervisor in 1997.

Farkas is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Security Studies, and Women in International Security Studies and is on the advisory board for the Harold Rosenthal Fellowship in International Relations and the Aspen Institute Socrates Scholar Program. In 2005 she served on a Council of Foreign Relations task force chaired by Samuel R. Berger and Brent Scowcroft that produced a monograph In the Wake of War: Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities. In 2009 she became a member of the Center for National Policy's Future Forces advisory group. She is also a blogger for National Journal.

Farkas's publications include journal articles and opinion pieces in The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times on issues including Balkan peace operations and military readiness. She is also the author of the 2003 book, Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s.

Personal life

Farkas's father is Charles Farkas.

She has a younger sister Maria Farkas-Szokolai.

She is of Hungarian descent and speaks English, Hungarian, and German as well as some French, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, and Hindi.

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