John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and Global Just Transition at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Latest by this author
Reducing global inequality and saving the planet from climate catastrophe are intertwined. Let’s address both at once.
John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. In 2012-13, he was also an Open Society Fellow looking at the transformations that have taken place in Eastern Europe since 1989.
Feffer is the author of several non-fiction books, numerous articles, and a fictional dystopian trilogy of Splinterlands, Frostlands, and Songlands. He has produced eleven plays, including seven one-man shows. A senior associate at the Asia Institute in Seoul, he has been also been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University.
A former associate editor of World Policy Journal, he has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has also worked for the AFSC on such issues as the global economy, gun control, women and workplace, and domestic politics. He has served as a consultant for Foreign Policy in Focus, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, among other organizations.
He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo). He’s been widely interviewed in print and on radio.
Feffer is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.
Feffer is available to give lectures and class presentations on topics including U.S. foreign policy, the Korean peninsula, and the politics of food. For more information, please email him at: johnfeffer@gmail.com.External
Labor and Green Colonialism in the Global South
FPIF | January | 2024
Workers in fossil fuel industries are acutely aware that their jobs are at risk, if not immediately then at some point in the future. Along with automation, the energy transition also threatens to reduce the ranks of those in sectors dependent on fossil fuel, like plastics, steel, and petrochemicals. And unions are particularly concerned that unionized jobs in these sectors will be replaced with lower-paid non-union positions if they aren’t outsourced to lower-wage countries altogether.
FPIF | May | 2021
The legislation that emerges from the U.S. Congress, on the other hand, is often as ugly and unappetizing as the process that created it.
FPIF | May | 2024
A survey of what action is being taken around the world against fossil fuel production.
Publications by this author
A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams
Zed Books | November | 2017
In this unique, panoramic account of faded dreams, journalist John Feffer returns to Eastern Europe a quarter of a century after the fall of communism, to track down hundreds of people he spoke to in the initial atmosphere of optimism as the Iron Curtain fell—from politicians and scholars to trade unionists and grass-roots activists.
What he discovers makes for fascinating, if sometimes disturbing, reading. From the Polish scholar who left academia to become head of personnel at Ikea to the Hungarian politician who turned his back on liberal politics to join the far-right Jobbik party, Feffer meets a remarkable cast of characters.
He finds that years of free-market reforms have failed to deliver prosperity, corruption and organized crime are rampant, while optimism has given way to bitterness and a newly invigorated nationalism. Even so, through talking to the region's many extraordinary activists, Feffer shows that against stiff odds hope remains for the region's future.The West’s Resurgent War on Islam
City Lights Open Media | 2012
Crusade 2.0 examines the resurgence of anti-Islamic sentiment in the West and its global implications. John Feffer discusses the influence of three “unfinished wars” the Crusades, the Cold War, and the current “war on terror.” He presents a timely, concise, and provocative look at current events in the context of historical trends and goes beyond a "clash of civilizations" critique to offer concrete ways to defuse the ticking bomb of Islamophobia.
Media by this author
Feature | May | 2021
Many believe that COVID-19 exposed everything that’s wrong with decades of the world’s governments betting on militarism, competition, and wealth creation. But is a better world really possible after this crisis?
Author John Feffer collected insight from dozens of the world’s leading thinkers and activists to answer this question, and he joins Town Hall Seattle to discuss the opportunity for transformative change. Offering an analysis of our current moment, collected in his book The Pandemic Pivot, Feffer shares global issues through eight in-depth discussions with a brain trust: Green recovery, the global economy, migrants and refugees, budget priorities, and more.
Feffer’s analysis offers an actionable framework that endeavors to demonstrate how equity and cooperation aren’t just nice principles—they’re survival strategies for the future of humanity. As vaccines introduce a light at the end of this pandemic tunnel, and the world imagines what we can look like after this and prevent the next crisis, this conversation is more urgent than ever before.Feature | January | 2011
“The Last Cold War Battle”, a lecture by John Feffer.
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