Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

10/15/2026

🎙️ “The majority of Americans believe that every human being has an immaterial soul, and they tend to base their sense of human dignity and equality on this belief. Yet the culture at large often operates under the assumption that physical reality is all there is. Which view is correct?”

Yale Philosophy Professor Shelly Kagan and Presidential Senior Fellow David Brooks debate the existence of souls, this week on podcast, produced by The Atlantic with support from Yale University.

Listen, watch & subscribe: https://youtu.be/HBw361lIXaA?si=7OFLMfthIvlKkrYu

Based at , Brooks is also host of , a public forum presented in collaboration with the Office of the President, fostering respectful debate and intellectual exchange across differences.

10/14/2026

The Yale Jackson School and the Blue Center were well represented at the Warsaw Security Forum this year.

Senior Fellows David Petraeus and Julie Smith and Blue Center Executive Director Phil Kaplan attended for conversations on the transatlantic relationship, the NATO alliance, and the future of warfare. The conference brings together government, industry, and academic leaders for high-level dialogue on European and transatlantic security.

10/13/2026

📖 What does it mean to keep documenting a war the world has moved on from?

In our latest Perspectives piece, a student-written blog post, Global Affairs major Jad Abdel Nour ’28 reflects on the event he organized with Syrian author Loubna Mrie, whose memoir Defiance was a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Reviews Prize in Nonfiction. About 50 faculty and students joined the conversation, moderated by Gareth Browne MPP ’28, a former Middle East correspondent for The Economist.

Afterward, Mrie told Abdel Nour that the students’ questions “reminded me that storytelling can still move people to care.”

Perspectives pieces are written by students and other members of the community and reflect the authors’ own views.

Read Abdel Nour’s post:

In this student perspectives piece, Global Affairs major Jad Abdel Nour ‘28 reflects on hosting the author of Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria — and collaborating with Yale Jackson students and faculty.

10/12/2026

🌡️ drive roughly half of today’s warming, yet they often go missing from corporate climate strategy.

Senior Lecturer Jessica Seddon, director of the Deitz Family Initiative, served on the Advisory Committee for the Carbon Containment Lab’s new Superpollutant Roadmap for Corporate Action, released at Beyond Alliance’s Superpollutant Action Summit during NYC Climate Week.

This new Roadmap lays out the ‘why and how’ for three levers companies can pull today:

▶️ Value Chain Intervention — cut superpollutant emissions inside your own operations and supply chain

▶️ Voluntary Carbon Markets — finance high-integrity mitigation beyond your footprint

▶️ Policy Engagement — support the regulation that makes both durable and scalable

Read the full roadmap at

Superpollutants are responsible for roughly half of today's gross warming, yet they remain almost entirely absent from corporate climate targets. Read the report here.

10/08/2026

Are we ready for the wars of the future? Senior Fellow General David H. Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) says not yet.

In a conversation with Finn Murphy for the Forecast 2050 series, Gen. Petraeus argues that America’s and the West’s armed forces need revolutionary change, not reform, to prepare for an era of autonomous warfare. He discusses the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, how drone swarms will shape future battlefields, and the big ideas needed to keep the world stable over the next 25 years.

Future victories may depend less on producing the most drones than on solving the command-design problem, which means educating leaders to command autonomous subordinates.

Gen. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led U. S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) before serving as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Watch the full conversation:

General David Petraeus believes we need to make revolutionary chang...

10/08/2026

🎙️ "Every system we have in society — whether it’s our economic system, our political system, our school system — all of them are based on a certain set of assumptions about human nature. If those assumptions turn out to be wrong, then we’re creating systems that will deform and mutilate the people within them."

This week on podcast, Yale University Presidential Senior Fellow David Brooks discusses human nature with Jonathan Haidt of NYU Stern School of Business.

Listen, watch & subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFTfANuLBF4

Based at , Brooks is also host of , a public forum presented in collaboration with the Office of the President, fostering respectful debate and intellectual exchange across differences.

Long before he became famous as the author of The Anxious Generatio...

10/07/2026

"A response built incident by incident is not deterrence."

In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Julianne Smith, the former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, examines the growing pattern of Russia's hybrid threats to European security: sabotage, disruption of critical infrastructure, and other deniable attacks.

A Senior Fellow at , she argues that allies have largely responded one incident at a time, and she considers what a more coordinated, collective approach to deterrence would require.

Learn more:

Smith, a senior fellow at the Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment, argues that NATO's incident-by-incident response to sabotage and other attacks across Europe falls short of deterrence.

10/06/2026

Congratulations to Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, the William Nordhaus Professor of Economics and Global Affairs at Yale Jackson, on being elected president of the American Economic Association.

Goldberg will serve as president-elect in 2027 and president in 2028, leading the world's largest professional association of economists. Her research spans international trade, development, and industrial organization. She previously served as chief economist of the The World Bank Group, editor-in-chief of the American Economic Review, and president of the The Econometric Society, and she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

See the full slate of newly elected AEA officers:

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10/05/2026

🇹🇼 Who sets the rules for agents on the factory floor?

Taiwan’s leading manufacturers are among the first to deploy autonomous “factory manager” agents, even as the island faces a particularly hostile cybersecurity environment. In a new Just Security piece, five-year BA-MPP candidate Ethan Chiu and coauthor Brian Jay Tang argue that Taiwan can help set global standards for safe industrial AI by building on its existing semiconductor equipment certification scheme rather than waiting for new legislation.

The proposal: certify each agent’s full configuration, authorize it site by site, and maintain ongoing oversight after deployment. Taiwan can also offer democratic partners a practical model for safe industrial AI adoption and help shape standards in this fast-moving sector.

Read their piece:

Taipei should extend its new semiconductor equipment certification system to test industrial AI agents and monitor them after deployment.

10/02/2026

"Even in a difficult environment, you can find ways of pushing back."

Philippe Bolopion, executive director of Human Rights Watch, spoke at ackson on September 28 about what he called a "perfect storm" of forces challenging human rights advocacy today: worldwide democratic decline, rising authoritarianism, weakening multilateral institutions, and attacks on institutions like the International Criminal Court.

In conversation with Jonathan Fanton, President Emeritus of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Bolopion didn't shy away from the grim diagnosis — but he also made the case for hope. "It's a long game. The odds are not in our favor now and, despite that, we are always able to achieve impact."

Read more:

The executive director of Human Rights Watch recently spoke at the Yale Jackson School about the “dire” challenges facing human rights advocacy and the hope he holds moving forward.