Kelly M. Greenhill is a political scientist with faculty appointments at Tufts University and at MIT. Greenhill holds an SM and a PhD from MIT, a CSS from Harvard, and a BA from UC Berkeley. Greenhill has Greenhill has published four books: Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy (winner of the 2011 International Studies Association’s Best Book of the Year Award--a second, expanded and updated edition of which is forthcoming); Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict; The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics (8th ed.); and Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics. She is currently preparing for publication a fifth book, provisionally entitled Fear and Present Danger: Extra-factual Sources of Threat Conception and Proliferation. 

Greenhill's research and political commentary have also appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and in national and international media outlets. Greenhill’s research has been cited and employed in legal briefs in cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and in policy briefs and planning guidance for other civilian and military organs of the U.S. government. She has held fellowships at Stanford’s Center for Security and Cooperation, at Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Belfer Center; at Columbia’s Saltzman Institute; and, in the UK, at the University of Cambridge and at SOAS (University College London). She also serves as Director of the MIT-Seminar XXI Program and as Co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs book series. Outside of academia, Greenhill has served as a consultant to NATO, the United Nations and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Bank, and the Ford Foundation; as a defense program analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense; and as an economic policy intern for then Senator John F. Kerry. 

During the 2022-2023 academic year, Kelly M. Greenhill will work with Ioannis Evrigenis to design a CAP course for incoming first-year students focused on facilitating serious dialogue about controversial political issues, such as race, poverty, inequality, and migration.  The aim of the course will be to encourage students to genuinely engage with different points of view on these issues, and get to the point where they can discuss them calmly and substantively with those who may not share their views.  Much of the design will center on the framework for meaningful and collaborative dialogue, in an environment that feels simultaneously safe and challenging.  The course is part of the School of Arts & Sciences’ “Start at the Source” initiative to support DEIJ work at the department level.