Instructor: Scott Worden

Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government has imposed one of the most comprehensive security crackdowns in modern history against the Uyghur ethnic group in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, historically known as East Turkestan. The Uyghur people are Turkik and Muslim, and the Chinese government has capitalized on fears of Islamic extremism to impose a system of mass incarceration, forced labor, and banning religious and cultural expressions that the U.S. State Department identified as Genocide and crimes against humanity. Despite this designation and an array of international sanctions, Chinese authorities maintain the most technologically sophisticated system of mass surveillance and repression ever implemented. How, therefore, does one conduct effective human rights advocacy against a rising superpower?

This course will examine Central Asia’s geopolitical context, identify the contours of human rights violations against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang and explore the legal, political, and economic tools that are available to exert pressure on China to end its repressive policies. Students will also engage with Uyghur community leaders in the global diaspora to understand their priorities. The class will then work with the Campaign for Uyghurs, a leading Uyghur rights organization, to leverage documentation, data analysis, and advocacy techniques to increase global awareness of the Uyghur Genocide and build pressure for positive change. Students will identify the most important global audiences that can influence the Chinese government’s policies against Uyghurs and recommend targeted advocacy strategies for the Campaign for Uyghurs to implement.

Instructor: Sarah Morell

For decades, multiple U.S. administrations have pursued a range of policies—diplomatic engagement, economic sanctions, and covert operations—to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Yet, Iran has steadily advanced its nuclear program, leveraging negotiations and regional instability to inch closer to weapons capability. The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7th marked a critical inflection point in Tehran’s strategic calculus. With heightened regional tensions, Iran may view a nuclear weapon as an essential deterrent against both Israel and potential U.S. military intervention, a step that would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the region.

This capstone project, conducted in partnership with Greenmantle, will task Jackson School students with assessing the implications of Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Students will look to historical cases of other states’ gaining nuclear capability and how it changed their behavior to evaluate the geopolitical, economic, and security ramifications for the U.S., Israel, and the broader Middle East. Drawing on primary sources and expert interviews, this project will give students an opportunity to provide actionable insights for private-sector stakeholders navigating an increasingly unstable global order.

Instructor: Jean-Paul Chretien

Pandemic threats are evolving faster than the systems designed to detect and contain them. Climate change, urbanization, biodiversity loss, and global travel are accelerating the spread of infectious diseases, while breakthroughs in biotechnology—though promising—introduce new risks, including engineered pathogens that could outpace current countermeasures. The world needs a smarter, more coordinated approach to assessing and mitigating these risks before they escalate into full-blown crises.

In this practicum, we’ll dive into the landscape of international efforts on pandemic risk assessment and their intersection with climate change, mapping out the organizations, policies, and scientific initiatives shaping global preparedness. Working with the United Nations Foundation, we’ll analyze where existing frameworks align, where they clash, and where critical gaps leave the world vulnerable. Through research, stakeholder engagement, and strategic analysis, we’ll develop real-world recommendations to enhance collaboration, improve data-sharing, and ensure pandemic science informs high-level policy discussions at upcoming global forums like the World Health Assembly, G20 meetings, COP30, and missions in the lead-up to the UN High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Preparedness.

This course is an opportunity to engage directly with global health leaders, think critically about the intersection of science and policy, and help shape a future where the world is better prepared for emerging biological threats.

Instructor: Admiral (ret.) John Weigold

The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) poses a significant national security challenge to the United States, and economic competition with the PRC is increasingly linked to national security issues. The PRC regime utilizes a tightly held and autonomous leadership organization to coordinate all levers of national power.

U.S. national security requires a whole of government approach to deter PRC aggression in peacetime through the coordination of diplomatic, information, military, and economic activities at the CDRUSINDOPACOM level and above. The emphasis in this project will be analyze AI’s role in strengthening cyber and information warfare capabilities within USINDOPACOM, ensuring resilience against adversarial AI-driven threats while enhancing competition and countering gray zone activities. Our key research areas will focus on AI-enhanced threat detection and response in information networks; Policy frameworks for autonomous systems in cyber and cognitive warfare; Ethical and legal considerations of AI deployment in offensive and defensive information operations;AI applications for countering coercive cyber and hybrid threats from state and non-state actors; Leveraging the private sector to support AI-driven security initiatives with U.S. government financing.

The goal is a policy document outlining best practices and strategic directives for AI-driven cyber and information warfare within USINDOPACOM, incorporating anti-coercion measures and private sector engagement.

Instructor: Roland McKay

This capstone course will explore America’s web of security and economic partnerships in the Persian Gulf region, focusing on the evolution of America’s role as a security guarantor in an increasingly multi-polar world. Frontier areas of foreign policy such as critical minerals and emerging tech have broadened these relationships, previously dominated by oil and gas exports. Students will provide policy recommendations to the client on how the United States can better position itself in the region vis-a-vis geostrategic competitors. The course will challenge students to draw upon a mix of history, international relations theory, and economics to analyze regional trends and formulate recommendations. We will engage with key stakeholders from the region, including Gulf government officials and private sector representatives.

Instructor: Naysan Adlparvar

The UN is facing an existential moment. On the one hand, international development and the multilateral system are at risk. The current US Administration, with its nationalist proclivities, is upending the global order; cutting significant funding to the UN system and beyond, calling for widespread UN reform, and challenging the very need for an international system to promote sustainable development. On the other hand, the UN is confronted by a multitude of global structural transitions (e.g., climate, energy, health, economic, technological, geopolitical) and the crises, shocks and disruptions that result from those transitions. The UN must deal with an unparalleled set of risks, at a time when it is most vulnerable. A rethinking of development is required.

In June 2025, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will publish a new report entitled “Development at Risk”. Written by its Crisis Bureau, the report is UNDP’s contribution to reimagining development in the context of ongoing structural transitions and the crises they engender. Among its recommendations, the report is advocating for a new research agenda that reflects the emerging challenges and the need to investigate them to support development efforts. The Crisis Bureau’s Research, Analysis, Learning, and Innovation (RALI) Team (the client) has been developing a strategy to upgrade its capacities to manage policy research and external publications. The strategy will be accompanied by a compendium of research fields and associated topics that will support a multi-year research agenda on crisis, risks and fragility, aligned with the new UNDP Strategic Plan 2026-2029.

Capstone students will be tasked with exploring the current global structural transitions that the UN faces, including the changing geopolitical landscape that shapes UN programming and financing. This understanding will be leveraged to provide UNDP with a deliverable: a curated selection of pertinent research fields and detailed analysis on identified topics linked to global transitions and their impacts. These inputs will be utilised by UNDP to inform their forthcoming research compendium and multi-year research agenda. However, there is a unique added value to providing this deliverable to UNDP – while they are focused at the tactical level (of identifying a research agenda), the Capstone Team will have a unique opening with which to influence thinking at the strategic level, in other words, on how UNDP might navigate the existential crisis it faces. The stakes have never been higher.

Students joining this capstone project will deepen team working, presentation, writing, data collection and policy analysis capabilities, alongside developing an awareness of global structural transitions and crises. They will have access to the inner workings of the UN system, with opportunities to influence, learn and network.

Instructor: Lauren Young

This capstone project will examine how to effectively leverage sports based programs, both on a national and local level, as a policy tool for peace building with a focus on shared Arab-Israeli communities across Israel.
The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, one of the premier NGOs in Israel, has asked our capstone group to study the role of sports, from national and local teams, to fans and sporting events, as a policy tool to address social, cultural and political divides to help to define a common path forward towards integrated and peaceful shared Arab-Israeli communities. This capstone will develop practical policy solutions to fostering understanding and cooperation among citizens of diverse backgrounds, drawing on sports teams and programs as a tool to promote peaceful coexistence and equitable social integration.

Students will engage with leaders from local government, national, regional and international organizations including Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Peace Players, Ultimate Peace, the Israeli National Football Association, local soccer teams such as K’far Qasem FC, Umm El-Fahem, Maccabee Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv and their individual fan organizations. Students will also be tasked to examine a wide academic literature and about 20 years of local and international data monitoring and evaluation programming in the sport for peace and sport development space.

The final capstone deliverable will offer a comprehensive analysis of the role of sports in bridging cultural and social divides and make policy recommendations to enhance its role to strengthen social bonds in local Israeli communities. It will also contribute to a broader policy initiative for peace with regional implications.

Instructor: Shan Soe-Lin

On January 20, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order halting foreign aid programs pending a 90-day review. In the following month, the majority of USAID workers were put on indefinite leave, and 90% of USAID contracts valued at $54 billion were canceled, halting the flows of lifesaving medicines and support for essential programs. Twenty-one million people are no longer receiving treatment for HIV, 3.8 million women have lost access to contraception, and 125 million people are at risk of malnutrition following the suspension of aid.

The project sponsor, Chris Collins, president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria, has asked the capstone group to support a research project to understand the impact that the precipitous aid withdrawal has had and will have on the HIV, TB and malaria epidemics. He has asked the students to calculate the impact based on how much aid has been cut and the available fiscal space in each affected country to determine the potential for maintaining essential and targeted health services. Students will have the opportunity to learn disease modeling combined with health economics and policy analysis using publicly available data and open-source modeling tools. Students may also have the possibility of directly engaging with the Ministries of Health in affected countries, including Nigeria, Ghana and Cambodia, to assist in the prioritization of health expenditures to maximize the number of lives that can be saved within a reduced financial envelope. Collins will work to ensure that the final capstone report will be disseminated widely and used as part of the global advocacy work of Friends to educate stakeholders and decision-makers about the consequences of suddenly withdrawing aid, and the impact on health, economies, and global security.

Through their analysis, the students will have a real opportunity to understand the direct and indirect benefits of development assistance for health, gain valuable firsthand experience of how evidence can be used to drive action, and ultimately save lives.

Instructor: Mary Davis

In this capstone, students will work to advance ongoing efforts to establish and scale a global circular fashion economy, a closed-loop system in which waste is minimized. Our client, the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), is the world’s leading network committed to achieving a sustainable fashion industry, and includes luxury and mass brands as well as major foundations, NGOs, and advocacy groups.

The capstone project will involve students with GFA leadership and its network members and will focus on data collection and analysis related to GFA’s Circular Fashion Partnerships, including pilots underway in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. In addition, students will meet with policymakers and other stakeholders and will conduct research and case studies related to the commercial, social, political, and ethical dimensions of a circular fashion economy, with the goal of assessing its fuller context and complexities, including individual responsibility and global citizenship. The circular economy, a closed-loop system that foregrounds sustainability and renewable energy, is meant to minimize waste and optimize resources from the design phase to the end of product life. It is an alternative to the longstanding linear model, which follows a “take-make-dispose” pattern, where resources are extracted, made into products, and discarded as waste. While the circular model has potential for implementation in sectors ranging from automobile manufacturing to the food system, it holds exceptional promise in the fashion industry, a $1.3 trillion sector that employs more than 300 million people across the global value chain and involves everyone who wears clothes.

We are at an inflection point where pro-sustainability consumer sentiment and empowering technologies (including AI) create a realistic opportunity for advancing a circular fashion system. New policies and governance structures are driving and formalizing this change, including a particularly aggressive and promising efforts in the EU, but buy-in across the value chain is essential.