Career Talk: Stanford Alumni Jeffrey Helsing, U.S. Institute of Peace Associate Vice President

Join us for a discussion with Jeffrey Helsing and learn about his extensive work in conflict resolution training globally, particularly in the Middle East. Helsing, a Stanford alum, works at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a nonpartisan institute that promotes national security and global stability by reducing violent conflicts abroad. Through research, training and analytical techniques, the USIP empowers practitioners and local communities with means to more effectively avert violent conflict, and works with educational institutions to increase their ability to teach peace and conflict studies.

Under Helsing’s supervision, the USIP hosted a Handa Center Summer Fellow in 2017, and has agreed to continue hosting Human Rights Fellows in Summer 2018.

Helsing is the Associate Vice President responsible for the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, USIP’s education and training center.  He oversees the content of USIP’s education and training programs as well as curriculum development in the United States and in conflict zones abroad.  Helsing has close to three decades of conflict resolution education and training globally, particularly in the Middle East. For more than eight years, Helsing worked with groups in Israel and the Palestinian Authority training educators, NGO workers, university students and young leaders in developing conflict resolution, nonviolence, human rights, and communication and facilitation skills.

He has 20 years of experience as an educator, and has taught a broad range of international relations subjects, including conflict resolution, human rights, comparative foreign policies, American foreign policy and international relations theory.  He has written on conflicts in the Middle East and the impact of education policies and projects in conflict zones.  He has co-edited a book on the links between human rights, humanitarian law and peacebuilding and also written a book on Lyndon Johnson’s decisions to escalate the war in Vietnam.

Helsing holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.