Alton Frye
Presidential Senior Fellow Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations
Alton Frye is the first Presidential
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations. As executive,
institution-builder and scholar, he has been a leading figure in the American
foreign policy community for over 30 years.
Frye has served the Council in many roles including president, senior vice president, and national director. He founded both the Council's Washington program and its national program, spurring the organization's development into a national institution. As an institution-builder he has served on the boards that created the Pacific Council on International Policy, the Henry L. Stimson Center (where he is vice chairman), the Education for Employment Foundation and other not-for-profit organizations. He was a member of the first board of advisors of the Richard Nixon Center and the founding chairman of Catalytic Diplomacy. In addition he serves currently as a board member for the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and as a director of Partners for Democratic Change, an organization working to build civil society in some 50 countries, and the Foundation for Caregivers.
After beginning his career as a Rand Corporation strategic analyst, Frye was for some years a staff director for U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke, later working closely with such legislators as Howard Baker, Edmund Muskie, William Cohen, Sam Nunn and Les Aspin. He joined the Council initially as an International Affairs Fellow, holding appointment jointly as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has been a visiting faculty member at Yale University, Harvard University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. Frye is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of St. Louis University, and he received his Ph.D. from Yale University where he has been a Stimson senior fellow.
He is the author of numerous books and articles, including A Responsible Congress: The Politics of National Security. He directed and edited the Council studies Toward an International Criminal Court?, and Humanitarian Intervention: Crafting a Workable Doctrine. Dr. Frye's contributions to national security policy include the strategic build-down concept and design of a possible Zero-Ballistic-Missile regime (winner of the Olive Branch Award of the Center for War, Peace and the News Media). Long active as an advisor to both the legislative and executive branches of government, his service to contemporary legislative-executive relations has been recognized by election to the National Academy of Public Administration.
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