Marie Elizabeth Harf (born June 15, 1981) is an American
political commentator
A pundit is a person who offers opinion in an authoritative manner on a particular subject area (typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport), usually through the mass media. The term pundit describes both women and men, altho ...
for the
Fox News Channel
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City, U.S. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is ow ...
and former deputy campaign manager for policy and communications for the Representative Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) presidential campaign. She served as the Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications to U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the Presidency of Barack Obama#Administration, administration of Barac ...
, leading the Iran nuclear negotiations communications strategy. Prior to that, Harf was Acting Spokesperson and Deputy Spokesperson for the
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...
.
Early life
Harf is the daughter of Jane Ax Harf of
Granville, Ohio
Granville is a Village (United States)#Ohio, village in Licking County, Ohio, United States. The population was 5,946 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. The village is located in a rural area of hills, known locally as the Welsh Hills ...
and James E. Harf of
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...
, and is a native of Granville, Ohio. She graduated from Granville High School in 1999.
She graduated from
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...
with a BA in Political Science with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and then received her master's degree in Foreign Affairs from the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
, where her thesis examined the prospects for continued regime stability in Saudi Arabia.
Career
Harf began her career at the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA as an analyst focusing on Middle Eastern leadership issues. She later became the media spokesperson for the CIA.
During the 2012 presidential election, she reportedly helped craft U.S. President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
's national security and communications strategy, and also served as campaign spokesperson on national security issues. After Obama's re-election to a second term of office, Harf was the press spokesperson for
Chuck Hagel
Charles Timothy Hagel ( ; born October 4, 1946)
In June 2013, Harf was appointed Deputy Spokesperson for the Department of State, where she served under Jen Psaki.
Harf attracted controversy for an interview she gave on ''
Hardball with Chris Matthews
''Hardball with Chris Matthews'' is an American television talk show hosted by Chris Matthews. The program premiered on the now-defunct America's Talking network in 1994 (as ''Politics with Chris Matthews'') before moving to CNBC, and then to M ...
'' on February 16, 2015, following the release the day before of a video by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. In response to questioning from Matthews on the U.S.'s strategy toward ISIS, Harf said, "We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether ..." Her critics ridiculed her on social media with the
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...
"#JobsForISIS", which became a top 10 trending topic on U.S. Twitter.
In April 2015,
Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg T ...
reported that retiring U.S. Navy
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a flag officer rank used by English-speaking navies. In most European navies, the equivalent rank is called counter admiral.
Rear admiral is usually immediately senior to commodore and immediately below vice admiral. It is ...
John Kirby would soon be appointed Spokesperson for the Department of State, replacing Acting Spokesperson Marie Harf, who had also interviewed for the position. In 2013, Kirby was selected rather than Harf for the spokesperson position at the U.S. Department of Defense under Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel
Charles Timothy Hagel ( ; born October 4, 1946)
In January 2017, she left U.S. government service to be a political commentator for the
Fox News Channel
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website based in New York City, U.S. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is ow ...
. In May 2019, Harf left Fox News to work for Rep. Seth Moulton's presidential campaign. After Rep. Moulton suspended his campaign, she became the Executive Director of the progressive Serve America PAC, founded by Seth Moulton. She returned as a Fox News Contributor in September 2019.