Hard as it is to believe, it is the autumn quarter of the Henry M. Jackson School’s one hundred and sixteenth year. For more than a century we have been, to borrow the title of our centennial publication, “engaging minds and engaging the world.” I have noted in past welcome letters just how empowering it is to know that this storied institution persisted and grew through two world wars, multiple pandemics, and sea changes in government at home and abroad.
Director Danny Hoffman. Photo by Dennis Wise
The Jackson School has, over multiple generations, engaged minds and engaged the world through teaching, research and public programming. We did so precisely because so many crises in the past century have called for intellectual courage, leadership and creativity – exactly what we find in our faculty and staff and what we instill in our students. In the 1909 inaugural address that launched what is today the Jackson School, Reverend Herbert H. Gowen set out a vision: Americans must be broadly well-informed in global affairs as a pre-condition for good governance, prosperity, peace and security. Today we feel the imperative to educate and comment today as profoundly as we ever have. I take comfort in knowing that the Jackson School was founded in that spirit and that it has grown stronger because we have not waivered from that core purpose.
Many of you will know that one of the key tools that enabled us to carry out our mission over the past six decades was the federal funding allocated through the National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, known colloquially as Title VI awards. The Jackson School was one of the original American institutions of higher education to hold these four-year grants. Over decades we received more awards than almost any institution in the country. We were routinely cited as a model for stewarding Congressionally mandated funds that supported Middle East Studies; East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Studies; Western European Studies and Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies; Canadian Studies; and Global Studies. Title VI awards allowed us to support students learning languages from each of these parts of the world; supported the training of K-12 and community college teachers (including the Global Sport Community College Master Teachers Institute profiled below); contributed to hiring faculty across campus and underwrote public events focused on world affairs. Since the early 1960s, the Jackson School’s sense of public mission was tied to the federal mandate for educating students and the public to be well informed global citizens.
Sadly, in September of this year the Department of Education determined that Title VI funding no longer aligns with the administration’s priorities and the program was eliminated. There is no question that this will affect what we do as a School. In the past year alone, we allocated more than $1 million in federal scholarships to students across the University of Washington and almost $1.5 million to teaching, research, public programming and administrative support of area studies. The positive news is that losing one tool in our kit does not end the work or our ability to do it. Our commitment and our capacity to engage minds and engage the world remain. Knowing that these changes could come, we were prepared.
This newsletter captures some of that work. You will read here about the amazing student research our undergraduates and graduates carried out this summer. Our faculty continue to publish ground breaking research, exemplified by Andrea Arai’s new edited volume on creativity and social change in East Asia. We remain a critical source of public commentary, from Daniel Bessner’s award-winning podcast on world affairs to the Global Sport Lab’s series of interviews in the run-up to the FIFA Men’s Soccer World Cup 2026. In the coming months we will once again offer our popular hybrid course / public lecture series, Trump in the World 2.0. In the past months we also officially launched an M.A. in International Studies: East Asia, a one or two-year program with China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan as four track options, with the first entering class this autumn quarter.
Each of our 20+ centers and programs, our 46 faculty members, and our hundreds of students will engage the world this year as they have for well over a century. The need for well-informed citizens has not changed. I am pleased so say that neither has the Jackson School’s commitment to, or ability to support them.
Thanks to the support of the College of Arts & Sciences, the University of Washington, and the many alumni and supporters of the School like you we are able to respond to a crisis by asking what the world needs of us now – and then ensuring that we deliver it. I look forward to welcoming you to our activities and programming this new academic year.
Danny Hoffman
Stanley D. Golub Endowed Chair in International Studies
Director, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
