School Notes: Jackson School of Global Affairs
September/October 2026

Sixteen named 2026 World Fellows

The International Leadership Center has announced the 2026 Yale World Fellows, 16 leaders working in politics and public policy, global health, technology, environment, journalism, and the arts, including a Ukrainian journalist, a Chinese environmentalist, and a Kenyan orchestral conductor. Yale’s signature global leadership program selects 16 individuals each year from thousands of applicants for an intensive four-month period of academic enrichment and leadership training; since 2002, it has welcomed more than 400 Fellows from 102 countries. 

Faculty books earn acclaim

Two Yale Jackson faculty published widely acclaimed books this spring. In After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World, Sterling Professor Ian Shapiro ’83PhD, ’87JD, argues that the world’s drift from post–Cold War optimism to today’s democratic backsliding and geopolitical tension was the result of avoidable political choices, not an inevitability. In The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History, historian Odd Arne Westad warns that the risk of great-power war is rising, drawing on parallels between today’s fracturing world order and the nationalism and rivalry that preceded the 20th century’s great wars. The Coming Storm was named a best book of the year by The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.

Bridging global issues

Yale Jackson leadership joined 40 scholars, policymakers, journalists, and practitioners at the 2026 Transatlantic Bridge Conference, hosted by Johns Hopkins SAIS Europe in Bologna, Italy, for two days of dialogue on AI governance, European security, democratic legitimacy, and the future of the global economy. A recurring theme was that today’s policy challenges—security, economics, technology, and democracy—can no longer be understood in isolation. The conference is a collaboration of Yale Jackson, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs, and Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs.