First New School to Launch at Yale in Four Decades will Focus on Global Affairs

Having achieved its fundraising goals on schedule, The Jackson Institute of Global Affairs will open as a school at Yale University this fall, becoming the first new professional school established at Yale in more than 40 years. Plans to transition the current Jackson Institute to a degree-granting school were first announced in 2019, targeting a fundraising objective of $200 million for its endowment.

“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,” said Yale University President Peter Salovey in a letter to the University community. 

“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,” the new school will greatly enhance Yale’s “ability to answer that call.”

One of the top priorities of the new School is to “equip the next generation of scholars, practitioners, and policy makers with the ability to apply evidence-based decision-making to address global challenges.”

Its opening this fall will mark the first new professional school created at Yale since the establishment of the School of Management nearly a half century ago in 1976.

 A renowned scholar in international economics, industrial organization, economic development, and applied econometrics, Professor James A. Levinsohn will be the inaugural dean of the school, effective as of July 1.  He is currently the director of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, which he has led since 2010, the Charles W. Goodyear Professor in Global Affairs, professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and professor of management at the Yale School of Management. 

In recent years, Yale has established a Master of Public Policy degree and made changes to the institute’s curriculum as a precursor to the new school.  Under Levinsohn’s leadership, the Jackson Institute also launched the undergraduate Global Affairs major, the Kerry Initiative and the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy, among other initiatives. The new schools is expected to leverage Yale’s strong history department to create a program that is more history-focused than programs at other schools of public affairs.

Professor Levinsohn’s own research contributions reflect the Yale Jackson School’s focus on multidisciplinary scholarship. His work has intersected with public health, economics, political science, environmental science, and other fields.

Levinsohn has studied the impact of internal migration on household well-being in South Africa and estimated the demand for sanitation in Bangladesh. He has published widely on trade policy, youth employment policy, foreign investment practices, and multinational corporations. His research projects have included studying the effects of HIV/AIDS on unemployment in South Africa and working with Sudanese refugees seeking compensation for forcible removal from their homelands. He also has analyzed how environmental policies influence the U.S. automobile market, according to the university.

In 2021, Professor Levinsohn was elected president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a convening organization for the world’s top schools of international affairs. He earned his B.A. from Williams College, his M.P.A. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

Levinsohn told the Yale News that the new school will be integrated with other professional schools at Yale, as well as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale College. The school also plans to have policy practitioners, rather than traditional academic professors, teach some of its courses. In October, the university’s International Security Studies program and the newly established International Leadership Center, joined the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs as the two newest additions to the emerging professional school.

Last fall, Wahzma Sadat ’14, the first Afghan woman to graduate from Yale College and Yale Law School, led a virtual discussion forum in which she talked about the status of Afghanistan — as the Taliban quickly overtook Afghanistan following United States forces’ withdrawal, ending a 20-year war.  The two-part webinar series was conducted by the Jackson Institute. The first of that series, “Afghanistan: A View from the Frontlines” featured Clarissa Ward ’02, CNN’s chief international correspondent.