Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

09/01/2026

Congratulations to Aiken Wang, a rising senior in the Global Affairs major, on receiving the 2026 Douglas A. Beck Prize from the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Wang's work focuses on U.S.-China relations, national security policy, and grand strategy. This summer, through the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, he conducted fieldwork in Taiwan on asymmetric defense reform — building on prior experience at the U.S. State Department, the Council on Foreign Relations, and U.S. Pacific Command. At Yale University, he is president and co-founder of the Yale Dialogue on U.S.-China Relations.

The Beck Prize recognizes undergraduates who demonstrate deep commitment to global affairs, with a preference for those pursuing careers in national security.

Read more about Wang's path to the award:

The award is presented to undergraduates who have demonstrated a deep interest in and commitment to global affairs, with a preference for students interested in a career supporting national security.

09/01/2026

🌎 New academic year, new website!

💻 We've given jackson.yale.edu a fresh look just in time for Academic Year 2026-27. Take a look around and let us know what you think!

Yale University

08/12/2026

economist Aleh Tsyvinski was featured in NPR's Planet Money on new research using AI "tokens" — the units AI companies use to measure and bill for usage — to track how artificial intelligence is reshaping financial markets.

In a new working paper with Nicola Borri and Yukun Liu, Tsyvinski and his coauthors analyzed 380 trillion AI tokens to study which companies' stock prices rise and fall with overall AI usage. They find an "AI premium": companies markets see as AI beneficiaries have earned significantly higher returns — and not just in the tech sector.

"The story of AI is no longer just a Silicon Valley story," Tsyvinski told NPR. "Financial markets already see Main Street being impacted."

Read more on the NPR website:

AI companies use tokens to track usage and bill customers. Now economists are using them to track the spread of AI through the economy.

06/16/2026

“How do you balance economic openness with concerns about competitiveness, technological leadership, and economic security?”

At the 2026 Transatlantic Bridge Conference, hosted by Johns Hopkins SAIS Europe in Bologna, leadership joined 40 scholars, policymakers, journalists, and practitioners to examine AI governance, European security, democratic legitimacy, and the future of the global economy over two days of dialogue.

A recurring theme: today's policy challenges — security, economics, technology, democracy — can no longer be understood in isolation.

The TAB conference is a collaboration of Yale Jackson, Johns Hopkins University SAIS, IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs, and Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po.

Read more:

The 2026 Transatlantic Bridge Conference, May 29–30, Bologna, Italy Geopolitical fragmentation, technological disruption, democratic pressures, and shifting global power dynamics — these are among the most pressing challenges facing Europe, the United States, and their partners around the world,...

05/20/2026

Matt Trevithick '20 spent nearly a decade working across Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan before coming to — and left with the foundation for a company.

Blank Slate, the AI-driven platform he founded, recently closed a strategic investment from a leading aerospace firm. The platform models individual forgetting curves and uses adaptive algorithms to close knowledge gaps for teams in defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing. The stakes are high by design: "If you don’t know how to jump out of a plane, that’s a problem," he says. "If you build a plane incorrectly, you're in the news."

The research behind it began at Yale Jackson, where Trevithick worked with Senior Lecturer Casey King on a randomized controlled trial showing that anticipated forgetting could be systematically reduced in cognitively healthy adults.

Now Trevithick is back — co-teaching "Field Operations in Global Affairs" with Senior Fellow Elliot Ackerman, focused on the practical mechanics of operating in complex environments.

"Jackson gave me the space to connect big ideas to real-world ex*****on," he said. "Coming back to teach, the focus is on closing that same gap for my students."

Read the profile:

Matt Trevithick is drawn to problems where failure is not an option. In zero-fail environments, the question is simple: how do you ensure the human mind performs reliably under pressure? Trevithick ’20 is the founder and CEO of Blank Slate, an AI-driven platform focused on workforce cognitive read...

05/13/2026

🏅 Congratulations to Bayan Galal ’23, undergraduate Global Affairs alum and Global Health Scholar, now now a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been selected to receive The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which support graduate study for immigrants and children of immigrants.

Read the Yale University News profile:

Three Yale students and a recent Yale College alumnus are among 30 individuals to receive Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which support graduate studies for immigrants or children of immigrants.

05/12/2026

🎙 Could the United States and China be headed toward conflict?

Few people are better positioned to address that question than 's Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs.

The most consequential foreign policy questions of our moment center on China — its rise, its ambitions, its economic reach, and the implications of its growing military strength. In a recent episode of The Foreign Affairs Interview, Westad discusses his new book, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History. He draws on the long arc of Chinese and global history to examine what's driving Beijing's foreign policy, how China sees its role as a great power, and what history tells us about the paths both to war and to peace.

Westad sees warning signs in the historical record, and lessons for today's policymakers.

🎧 Listen:

The biggest questions in U.S. foreign policy today tend to be about China. Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent ...

05/12/2026

"The claim that America is outmatched in cyberspace — technically, organizationally or intellectually — is wrong."

General (Ret.) Timothy Haugh argues in The New York Times Opinion Section that the capability to defend the nation already exists, distributed across American industry, government, and academia. What has been missing is a clear legal framework and a shared expectation that defending against foreign cyberattacks is not an optional public service — for the private sector or for government.

Haugh is well-positioned to make this argument. A senior fellow at Yale Jackson's Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment, he previously served as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.

Writing in the context of this week's Trump-Xi summit, General Haugh offers a substantive roadmap: empower technology companies to act, help states and municipalities afford better defenses, hold adversaries publicly accountable, and resource Cyber Command for the competition ahead.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/international-world/i-ran-the-nsa-this-is-how-to-defeat-chinas-hacker-army.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Beijing has hacked America, but we have all the tools we need to fight back.

05/08/2026

🌍 Introducing the 2026 Yale World Fellows:
The Yale International Leadership Center has selected 16 extraordinary leaders for its flagship global leadership program — practitioners working across politics, public policy, global health, technology, environment, journalism, and the arts.

This year's cohort includes a Ukrainian journalist, a Chinese environmentalist, and a Kenyan orchestral conductor, among others selected from thousands of applicants worldwide.

"The world does not lack for problems or pessimists," said ILC director Emma Sky. "What it needs are skilled, courageous practitioners willing to create new possibilities. The 2026 World Fellows are exactly that."

Now in its 24th year, the World Fellows program has welcomed more than 400 fellows from 102 countries. It is housed at the International Leadership Center at Yale Jackson, which also runs parallel initiatives for practitioners in climate, peace, and multilateralism.

Read the announcement:

We are delighted to announce the 2026 Yale World Fellows. These 16 extraordinary individuals are leaders working in politics and public policy, global health, technology, environment, journalism, and the arts around the world. They include a Ukrainian journalist, a Chinese environmentalist, and a Ke...

05/08/2026

The Yale International Leadership Center is proud to announce the 2026 cohort of Yale World Fellows.

These 16 individuals are leaders working in politics and public policy, global health, technology, environment, journalism, and the arts. They include a Ukrainian journalist, a Chinese environmentalist, and a Kenyan orchestral conductor.

“The world does not lack for problems or pessimists. What it needs are skilled, courageous practitioners willing to create new possibilities. The 2026 World Fellows are exactly that,” says Emma Sky, Director of the Yale International Leadership Center.

Meet the 2026 cohort: https://worldfellows.yale.edu/class/class-of-2026/