Jean-Marie Guéhenno Is Named Saltzman Professor

Image

Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the director of SIPA’s Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution, has been named as the School’s Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of Practice in International and Public Affairs. The appointment marks Guéhenno’s return to the same position that he held with distinction from 2010 to 2014, before departing to become president and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

Guéhenno had rejoined the SIPA faculty in January 2021 as the Kent Visiting Professor of Conflict Resolution. He assumed the directorship of the Kent Global Leadership Program following the death of Professor Edward C. Luck in February, and now succeeds Luck as Saltzman professor as well. In addition to leading the Kent program, Guéhenno will also head SIPA’s degree specialization in International Conflict Resolution.

Among his many affiliations, Guéhenno is a distinguished fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and sits on the United Nations Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. He is a trustee of both the Carnegie Corporation of New York and SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Guéhenno led the International Crisis Group from 2014 to 2017. Before that, during his initial tenure at SIPA, he took a leave of absence in 2012 to serve under UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as deputy joint special envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States on Syria. From 2000 to 2008, Guéhenno was the UN’s under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, a role in which he led the largest expansion of peacekeeping in the history of the UN, overseeing approximately 130,000 staff on eighteen missions.

A former French diplomat, Guéhenno has also been director of policy planning in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ambassador to the Western European Union, and chairman of the French Institute of Higher Defense Studies.