The Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs today announced the establishment of the Center for Peace and the Global Good. The new center — which aligns with the school’s mission and values in its dedication to academic rigor, interdisciplinary study, research, teaching, and policy engagement on peace and human welfare — will support faculty, visiting fellows, scholars, and students working on a wide range of issues, such as peacebuilding, human rights, global health, conflict resolution, peace and reconciliation social entrepreneurship, and the applied principles of strategic nonviolence.
At a time of deep global uncertainty and conflict, the center is expected to position the school at the forefront of scholarship and practice dedicated to building a more just and stable world, equipping rising leaders with the vision, knowledge, and practical skills to build that world and to lessen, or even avert, future conflict, school leaders say.
The center’s launch was made possible by a transformational gift from John ‘67 and Susan Jackson.
“This gift gives Yale Jackson the resources to turn scholarship on peace and the global good into work that shapes policy and practice, not just the academic conversation,” said Jim Levinsohn, Charles W. Goodyear Professor of Global Affairs and dean of the Jackson School. “We expect this center to become a place where research and study translate directly into impact — for policymakers, for practitioners, and for the students who will carry this work forward.”
Jackson School leaders say establishing a Peace Center at Yale could not be more timely. Active wars continue in Asia, Africa, and Europe, civil political discourse has grown more divided in many countries, and basic human rights face new challenges in places where they were long taken for granted.
Bonnie Weir
Bonnie Weir, a senior lecturer at the Yale Jackson School, will serve as the center’s inaugural executive director. Weir joined Yale Jackson in 2023, and from 2023 until summer 2026 served as the school’s director of undergraduate studies, overseeing and reforming the Global Affairs major.
“There are so many faculty across the university doing work related to these themes,” she said. “Our vision is that this center will enable faculty working in very different contexts, from very different training backgrounds, to collaborate and create a hub at the university that becomes a convening place for faculty and students across the entire institution.”
She and the center’s other leaders will spend the fall semester planning its structure and programming, with the aim of having the center fully up and running in spring 2027.
Bonnie Weir addresses the 2026 Yale Peacebuilding Colloquium, “Peace, Power, and the Global Good” in April 2026.
The center will significantly expand the Jackson School’s current academic offerings around humanitarian themes. This strategic investment will balance and complement the school’s already well-established programs on diplomacy, security, and statecraft, allowing for a wider range of opportunities for Jackson master’s students, global affairs majors in Yale College, and the whole student population across the university, school leaders say.
“The center will be nimble and its thematic areas will be broad in order to respond to the state of the world as it evolves as well as to support the interests of faculty and students,” Weir said. “It’s a big tent, intentionally. It can encompass anything from human rights to global health to social innovation to post-conflict reconciliation and institutions. It touches on urgent areas of concern that we all face as engaged global citizens.”
In 2022, the Jackson School became Yale’s first new professional school in nearly five decades. Its forerunner, the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, was launched in 2010. The Center for Peace and the Global Good is the school’s newest program in its commitment to strengthening cross-disciplinary collaboration.
