Peter Feaver

Peter D. Feaver (Ph.D., Harvard, 1990) is the Alexander F. Hehmeyer Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University and Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS). From June 2005 to July 2007, Feaver was on leave from Duke and working as the Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House. Feaver co-directed with Bruce Jentleson a major research project funded by the Carnegie Corporation, “Wielding American Power: Managing Interventions after September 11.” Feaver is author of Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Harvard Press, 2003),and co-author, with Christopher Gelpi, of Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force ( Princeton University Press, 2004). He is co-editor, with Richard H. Kohn, of Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (MIT Press, 2001); and author of Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States (Cornell University Press, 1992). He has published several other monographs and over thirty articles and book chapters on American foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, civil-military relations, information warfare, and U.S. national security.

He won the Duke Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2001 and the Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award in 1994-95. In 1993-94, Feaver served as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council at the White House where his responsibilities included counter-proliferation policy, regional nuclear arms control, the national security strategy review, and other defense policy issues. He is married to Karen Feaver, and they have three children, two sons and a daughter.