This week on Babel, Jon talks with Ghassan Salamé, a Paris-based academic and former UN mediator with over three decades of experience moving between academia and public policy. They talk about how he started his UN career, the role and limitations of the United Nations as a conflict mediator, and how his experiences as a practitioner inform the way that he teaches international affairs. Then, Jon, Will Todman, Danny Sharp talk about how their own academic backgrounds prepared them for careers in foreign policy.