Learn from the people shaping global affairs
Yale Jackson students learn directly from the practitioners defining the field.
Senior Fellows include former heads of state, ambassadors, generals, agency directors, and journalists who teach courses informed by the experience, perspectives, and relationships they have accumulated throughout their own careers. Their expertise stems from their work addressing the world’s most pressing problems — financial crises, interstate conflicts, climate disasters, and national security threats among others.
Fellows of the International Leadership Center, including World Fellows, Climate Fellows, and Peace Fellows, spend time in residence, learning with the Yale community while also bringing perspectives from dozens of countries on how to build better societies. Among these Fellows are more than one Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Beyond the classroom, heads of state and other leaders visit regularly for talks and informal conversations with students. Whether through a semester-long course or a single afternoon, access to practitioners is built into life at Yale Jackson.
Recently on campus
Elected officials, generals, journalists, activists, and reformers are key participants in the Yale Jackson community. They teach and mentor students as well as learn with students — whether through a course, a workshop, or a coffee chat. Here's who came through most recently.
Željko Komšić, Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia & Herzegovina, speaks at Jackson
The February 9, 2026 event, “The World from the Periphery,” explored Bosnia and Herzegovina’s position in geopolitics — as a small country, a generation removed from war and genocide, still searching for stability.
Poet Pádraig Ó Tuama speaks on language and mediation at inaugural Peace Center event
Drawing on two decades of peace work in Northern Ireland, Ó Tuama argued that art — not strategy — may be peacebuilding's most underused resource.
Altana co-founder Peter Swartz '07 and economist Amit Khandelwal on how AI is remaking global trade
Part of the Blue Center’s Co-Lectures in the Theory and Practice of Statecraft series, the discussion focused on how artificial intelligence is transforming supply chain visibility and trade compliance, from environmental regulation to government sanctions.
Philippe Bolopion on the ‘perfect storm’ of factors challenging the human rights movement
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.