[1][2] From 2001 to 2010, he served as research director of the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), which is funded by the Central Intelligence Agency.
[11] Around the same time, he worked as a consultant to the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the design of a public early warning system for mass atrocities in countries worldwide.
[14][15] In 2020, Ulfelder became a Carr Center Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School to work with Erica Chenoweth as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab.
[16] In early 2025, Ulfelder resigned from his position in protest of Harvard's incorporation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s controversial Working Definition of Antisemitism into its guidelines after the university reached a settlement with plaintiff students who had sued the university for not taking appropriate action to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.
[17] The adoption of the IHRA's amounts to equating many criticisms of Israel with antisemitism, and Ulfelder argued Harvard's move made it impossible for him to teach elements of his field.