The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies is proud to present its Ninth Annual Arnold A. Saltzman forum:

“The Role of Diplomacy in a Changing World”

featuring Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering
former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs

with discussant Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Center for International Conflict Resolution

This event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. Please click here to register.

The Saltman Forum is an annual event held in honor of Amb. Arnold A. Saltzman. Each year, the Forum hosts a speaker on one issue of global importance and examines its political and security implications. This year, Amb. Pickering, a Career Ambassador with the Foreign Service, will discuss how diplomacy can be used in an era of rapidly shifting centers of power and lines of influence.

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, currently Vice Chairman at Hills and Company which provides advice and counsel to a number of major US enterprises, retired as Senior Vice President International Relations and a member of the Executive Council of The Boeing Company on July 1, 2006. He served in that position for 5 and one half years. He was responsible for The Boeing Company’s relations with foreign governments and the company’s globalization.

Pickering joined Boeing in January 2001, upon his retirement as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, where he had served since May 1997. Prior to that, he was briefly the president of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union. Pickering holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he was U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Pickering also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

From 1989 to 1992, he was Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York. He also served as Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger from 1973 to 1974.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno is Director of the Center of International Conflict Resolution. He also serves as Associate Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at SIPA, directs the School’s International Conflict Resolution specialization, and is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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.