The Jackson School was founded in 2010 as the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
In 2019, the Yale Board of Trustees approved plans to expand the institute into a professional school that will train and equip a new generation of leaders to devise thoughtful, evidence-based solutions for challenging global problems.
On January 18, 2022, Yale President Peter Salovey announced that the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs would open in fall 2022, with Professor Jim Levinsohn as its inaugural dean.
“The transition from the Jackson Institute to the Yale Jackson School occurs as communities around the world are facing profound challenges: climate change, war, migration, pandemic, resource scarcity, and political division,” Salovey said in his announcement. “The complexity of these problems calls for solutions built from great breadth and depth of knowledge, expertise, and perspective. By bringing together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in political science, economics, history, law, and other fields, Professor Levinsohn will lead the Yale Jackson School in greatly enhancing our university’s ability to answer that call.”
