Elan Carr

With extensive experience as a senior U.S. diplomat, criminal prosecutor, military officer, and community leader, Elan Carr provides an influential voice on key public policy matters affecting America and the world today. He serves as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a teaching fellow at the University of Southern California, and a member of several for-profit and non-profit boards of directors.

In 2019, Mr. Carr was appointed United States Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. As the senior diplomatic representative of the United States and the chief advisor to the Secretary of State on the subject of anti-Semitism, he directed U.S. policy and programs aimed at combating it. While in office, he negotiated groundbreaking agreements with foreign governments; convened the first-ever U.S. Government-sponsored conference on combating online hate; drove new policies on anti-Zionism, anti-Israel discrimination, and campus anti-Semitism; broadened the global consensus on the definition of anti-Semitism; focused the attention of foreign and domestic law enforcement leaders on the importance of hate crimes prosecutions; launched philo-Semitism initiatives in multiple countries; and conducted an aggressive, global public diplomacy campaign by delivering more than 180 speeches throughout the world and conducting numerous press interviews. During his tenure, his office was voted by Congress to be given the rank of Ambassador.

Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Carr prosecuted violent felony crimes for more than a decade as a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County. He prosecuted murders, attempted murders, and cases involving Southern California’s most notorious criminal street gangs. While assigned to a special victim unit, he focused on sexual assault, domestic violence, and child molestation crimes. A number of his cases garnered media attention. He was also one of LA County’s few specially-designated animal cruelty prosecutors.

Mr. Carr is an officer in the United States Army Reserve and received multiple awards for his two decades of military service. In 2003-04, he spent nearly a year on military deployment in Iraq, where he helped to lead a joint anti-terrorism team in life-saving missions and prosecuted terrorists. He also helped to establish an independent Iraqi judiciary and trained Iraqi judges on constitutional law and criminal defense.

As the son of Jewish refugees from Iraq, Mr. Carr speaks Hebrew and the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. While in Iraq, he met with remnants of its Jewish community and worked with them to preserve communal property. He regularly led Jewish services in the former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

In 2014, Mr. Carr was the Republican nominee for Congress in California’s 33rd Congressional District. He finished first out of 18 candidates in a multi-party, top-two primary, and in the general election, he out-performed GOP registration in his district by 18 points. He received the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Young Gun” status—its highest rating—and was endorsed by the House leadership, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs, and the previous two Republican nominees for President of the United States.

Mr. Carr served as the 71st international president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a voting member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and a member of the National Council of AIPAC.

Mr. Carr is married to Dr. Dahlia T. Carr, a rheumatologist in private practice, and they have three children, Hannah, Rachelle, and Samuel.