Jean-Marie Guéhenno has come back to Columbia as the inaugural Kent visiting professor in conflict resolution. Guéhenno first came to SIPA in 2010 to serve as the Director of the Center of International Conflict Resolution and the Associate Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies. He left in 2014, when he was appointed President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. He is now a member of the U.N. Secretary General High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation.

Guéhenno previously served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations from 2000-2008. In that role, he led the largest expansion of peacekeeping in the history of the UN, overseeing approximately 130,000 staff on eighteen missions. Before joining the United Nations, Guéhenno served as 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.

Guéhenno has published articles in many newspapers and magazines, including "The Impact of Globalisation on Strategy" in the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Survival, "Globalisation and the International System" in the Journal of Democracy, “United Nations and Civil Wars in Daedalus, as well as articles or chapters in Internationale Politik, Prospect, Paradoxes of European Foreign Policy, and Strategic Analysis. He is the author of the End of the Nation-State (1993).

Guéhenno has also taught extensively, including as a professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris and at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. Guéhenno is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution; he chairs the scientific committee of the Institute for higher defense studies in Paris, and is a board member of the Carnegie Corporation, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and of his alma mater, the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Guéhenno is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA).