Jay Ulfelder is an American political scientist who is best known for his work on

political forecasting Political forecasting aims at forecasting the outcomes of political events. Political events can be a number of events such as diplomatic decisions, actions by political leaders and other areas relating to politicians and political institutions. ...

, specifically on anticipating various forms of political instability around the world. From 2001 to 2010, he served as research director of the

Political Instability Task Force The Political Instability Task Force (PITF), formerly known as State Failure Task Force, is a U.S. government-sponsored research project to build a database on major domestic political conflicts leading to state failures. The study analyzed fa ...

(PITF), which is funded by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. He is also the author of a book and several journal articles on

democratization Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an democratic transition, authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction ...

democratic backsliding Democratic backsliding or autocratization is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest and politi ...

, and

contentious politics Contentious politics is the use of disruptive techniques to make a political point, or to change government policy. Examples of such techniques are actions that disturb the normal activities of society such as demonstrations, general strike actio ...

. In the 2010s, Ulfelder maintained a blog called Dart-Throwing Chimp that offered commentary on geopolitical forecasting and other topics. Around the same time, he worked as a consultant to the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...

on the design of
public early warning system
for mass atrocities in countries worldwide. From 2017 to 2019, Ulfelder worked for Koto, the national security and risk division of Kensho Technologies, on the development of software to support the work geopolitical analysts. In 2020, Ulfelder became a Carr Center Fellow at the

Harvard Kennedy School The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is the school of public policy of Harvard University, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Kennedy School offers master's de ...

to work with

Erica Chenoweth Erica Chenoweth (born April 22, 1980) is an American political scientist, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. They are known for their research work on nonviolent civil resistan ...

as program director for th
Nonviolent Action Lab
In early 2025, Ulfelder resigned from his position in protest of Harvard's incorporation of the

International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), until January 2013 known as the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research or ITF, is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1998 wh ...

(IHRA)'s controversial Working Definition of Antisemitism into its guidelines after the university reached a settlement with plaintiff students who had sued the university for not taking appropriate action to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. The adoption of the IHRA's amounts to equating many criticisms of Israel with antisemitism.

Reception

Ulfelder has been cited and quoted as an expert on

and

political instability Political decay is a political theory, originally described in 1965 by Samuel P. Huntington, which describes how chaos and disorder can arise from social modernization increasing more rapidly than political and institutional modernization. Huntin ...

in the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' and the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

''. Ulfelder is an occasional contributor to ''

Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

'' and ''

FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...

''. One of his pieces in Foreign Policy, on why forecasting political violence and unusual situations around the world was considerably harder than forecasting the results of elections in the United States, received a lengthy response from Michael Ward and Nils Mitternich. In 2014, Ulfelder was interviewed on The Agenda with Steve Paikin about his work forecasting mass atrocities. He has also been interviewed by Strife blog and by the Center for Data Innovation and gave a talk at TEDx Tbilisi in 2013.

References

External links

Personal blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ulfelder, Jay American political scientists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)