ISS supports outstanding programs in which scholars, practitioners, and students collaborate on pioneering research of the highest quality.
Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy
The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy offers a year-long course (“Studies in Grand Strategy”) to Yale undergraduates and graduate students that addresses large-scale, long-term strategic challenges of statecraft, politics, and social change. The course encourages understanding of historical and contemporary global and domestic challenges, while developing students’ capacity for strategic thinking and effective leadership in a variety of fields.
The program integrates academic study at the undergraduate, masters, pre-doctoral, and post-doctoral level and is open to current Yale students.
The program supports other activities including: pre- and post-doctoral fellowships in grand strategy; student and faculty research, academic conferences, and other scholarly work in grand strategy.
Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy
The Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy was established in 2011, shortly after Dr. Henry A. Kissinger donated his papers to Yale University. The Kissinger Archives at Yale University consist of approximately one million documents and objects covering Dr. Kissinger’s extraordinary life as a diplomat, scholar, teacher, and private citizen.
The Kissinger papers at Yale serve as a foundation for the Johnson Center. As a program of Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, in collaboration with International Security Studies and the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, the Johnson Center encourages research and teaching on United States foreign policy by drawing on the Kissinger papers as well as other important Yale library collections in this field.
Kissinger Visiting Scholars who are researching and writing about the history of American diplomacy.
The center hosts an annual conference and other events that convene practitioners and scholars from around the world to discuss contemporary issues in international affairs.
Schmidt Program on Artificial Intelligence, Emerging Technologies, and National Power
The Schmidt Program fosters research and teaching that span the disciplines of computer science, data science, economics, engineering, history, international relations, law, philosophy, physics, and political science. It serves as a hub for scholars and practitioners working across disciplines on the technological and strategic transformations that are reshaping our world.
Cyberspace is now the backbone of global commerce, communication, and defense systems, and a key aspect of the critical infrastructure that powers modern civilization. Technologies and information spread nearly instantaneously, while the world economy and supply chains are integrated to a degree unprecedented in history.
Yet despite the immense benefits that have resulted from global connectivity, significant vulnerabilities persist, and threats are on the rise. Competition over strategic technologies and contests for advantage in the “information space” are growing, so far without standard international rules of the road. Moreover, the future likely will prove even more transformative due to advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Machines capable of sophisticated information processing, towards the frontier of autonomy, pose tremendous opportunities for economic growth and societal well-being. But the potential threats also are extraordinary: autonomous weaponry, AI-augmented cyberwarfare, sophisticated disinformation campaigns, and geopolitical instability as nations race to deploy these unpredictable technologies. The Schmidt Program examines how AI has the potential to alter the fundamental building blocks of world order.