Born in Long Island, Feinstein earned an AB in American Studies from Vassar College in 1981. He received an MA in political science at City University of New York a law degree from Georgetown University. He also studied at the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language in Moscow.

 

Feinstein began his Washington career in the non-governmental sector, serving as assistant director for research at the Arms Control Association from 1989-1994. His specialty was chemical weapons.

 

He then joined the Clinton administration in 1994, first in the Department of Defense as Senior Advisor for Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement Policy for one year. Feinstein shifted to the State Department in 1995, becoming Principal Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staff and serving as a senior advisor to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Feinstein’s work included non-proliferation, strategic arms control, South Asia, and State Department reform. He led the U.S. delegation to the UN special negotiations on trafficking in firearms, and coordinated overall U.S. diplomatic efforts in this area.

 

With the arrival of George W. Bush to the White House in 2001, Feinstein left the government and joined the Carnegie Endowment’s Non-Proliferation Project as a visiting scholar in April 2001. He focused on national security and diplomatic issues, including non-proliferation, European security, and national missile defense.

 

The following year he went to work for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was Deputy Director of Studies, Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and International Law, and executive director of the Task Force Program. He co-directed the 2002 nonpartisan CFR Task Force on Enhancing U.S. Leadership at the United Nations and he served as an expert on the 2005 congressionally-mandated Task Force on the United Nations.

 

Feinstein is the author of Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities, a Council on Foreign Relations Special Report, published January 2007.

 

In 2008, Feinstein became a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. While there he co-authored Means to an End: US Interest in the International Criminal Court, which focuses on the foreign policy, national security and the moral case for shifting US power to the court. 

 

During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Feinstein served as Hillary Clinton’s national security director. He then joined Obama’s team after Clinton failed to garner the Democratic nomination.  

 

Prior to being nominated for the ambassadorship to Poland, Feinstein was working as a senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary at the State Department.

 

A member of the New York and Washington, DC bars, Feinstein has taught international law and politics as an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the City University of New York.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Lee Feinstein, Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)