Dr. Eli Karetny is the deputy director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Dr. Karetny directs the Institute’s Project on UAP Studies and International Security, which supports the work of international relations scholars doing UAP research. In Spring 2027, Eli will teach a master’s course on UAP and National Security at the CUNY Graduate Center. Eli co-founded the UAP Working Group on International Engagement to develop academic research programs and policy ideas, which foster international cooperation in the field of UAP studies. Dr. Karetny also serves on the advisory board of the Society for UAP Studies.
Eli is the Principal Investigator on the Ralph Bunche Institute’s core international research grants, and he manages the Diplomat in Residence Program where he works alongside America’s first ambassador to Ukraine, Roman Popadiuk. Dr. Karetny serves as the Institute’s program officer and legal advisor on human rights projects doing work at the United Nations, including the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect on whose advisory board he sits. Eli also worked on the United Nations Intellectual History Project with Director Emeritus Thomas G. Weiss, whose extensive academic writings on multilateral security shaped the research programs of the Ralph Bunche Institute.
Dr. Karetny completed his PhD in International Relations and Political Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, received a JD/MBA from Temple University, and an MS in International Relations from New York University. He also served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, and he now studies esoteric wisdom at the Hotam School in Israel. He has written for academic journals on the concept of regime change in the work of Leo Strauss, on how Peter Thiel’s interpretation of the katechon can be applied to US foreign policy, and he is currently working on a paper about the way Strauss’s philosophic debates with Alexander Kojeve shed light on the UAP discourse around international governance of advanced technology.