SIPA’s Kent Global Leadership Program Now Accepting Applications for its 2025 Summer Training Seminar
The Kent Global Leadership Program is pleased to announce the opening of applications for the 2025 Summer Training Seminar! The fifth edition of the seminar will take place in person on the Columbia University Campus from June 2–6, 2025, and will combine experiential skills- building and expert panel discussions. Thanks to the generosity of our founding donor, Muhtar Kent, the seminar is tuition-free for a select group of mid-career diplomats. Participants will discuss the emerging dynamics of 21st century conflict and get to know the tools, knowledge, and negotiating techniques that are necessary to address them.
The 2025 Summer Training will focus on a new theme entitled Early Warning: The Race to Forecast Conflict in an Era of Rapid Change. What sense can we make of a world in which the pace of change keeps accelerating? As the effects of climate change threaten to provoke cascading crises in international relations, can the leaps in technological capacity keep pace? How deeply should governments, civil society, and business invest in trying to anticipate the conflicts of the future before they occur, and what systems can be put in place to absorb less predictable shocks?
The director of the program, SIPA Professor Jean-Marie Guéhenno, has served as Undersecretary General of the United Nations for Peacekeeping Operations. He recently gave the 2024 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Oxford University.
The theme of last year’s training was Technology and Conflict: Anticipating Change for Better and for Worse. It featured panel discussions on the implications of technological development on the conflict landscape in the areas of AI, Biotechnology, Disinformation, International Humanitarian Law, Ethics and the Environment. We are proud to offer videos of last year’s panels and fireside chats.
For further information on the program, please download our brochure or visit our website. To apply, please send a cover letter, CV and TWO letters of recommendation (one from a direct supervisor) to [email protected].