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Director’s Note: End of Spring Quarter 2017

June 29, 2017

Reşat Kasaba,

 I write to you from Rome, Italy, where I and UW Professor Kathie Friedman are teaching courses for the UW Honors Program at the UW Rome Center on historical and contemporary interactions between Italy and other places across the Mediterranean. Studying labor migration, political refugees, cultural influences, and the fate of liberal democracy from a European perspective is valuable both for understanding Europe itself and also for rethinking the challenges the U.S. is facing. We plan to expand study abroad opportunities to our students in the Jackson School and deepen our institutional relations in Europe and elsewhere in the years to come.

In spring quarter, we graduated 327 undergraduate and graduate students whose degrees, language learning and deep knowledge of a region cover the world. Our Jackson School Leadership Award winner this year, Chloe Akahori, in her speech during our June 8 Convocation, talked of having learned the art of asking questions, and understanding the world through a critical lens. She is now embarking on a 9-month Bonderman Travel Fellowship that will take her to countries to explore the impact of U.S. foreign policy. This is just one example from the Class of 2017.

We continue our mission to bridge the gap between academia and policymaking in all that we do. In early June we partnered with the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, in partnership with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation and support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, for a conference on emerging domestic and international cybersecurity issues that brought together dozens of Seattle-area businesses, trade representatives, foreign consulates, local and federal government representatives with UW and other faculty and a number of our alumni and student cybersecurity experts. As the keynote speaker, U.S. Congresswoman Suzan DelBene gave the view of cybersecurity policymaking from the other Washington.

I am particularly excited, after an extensive search this past year, to welcome five new faculty members to the Jackson School. You can read about them and more highlights about what we have been doing at the School in this edition of The Jackson Scoop.

We will be busy this summer. In addition to classes, in July our eight Title VI National Resource Centers funded by the Department of Education will host a Community College Master Teacher Institute, a two-day curriculum development workshop that brings together community college educators interested in networking with their peers and incorporating new information on international studies into their teaching and mentoring. This year’s topic is “Global Human Security: A Multidisciplinary Perspective”. Also this month our East Asia Resource Center organizes two weeklong K-12 seminars for teachers coming from 16 states, covering topics from the roots of East Asian religions to Japanese neighborhood associations.

I wish you a safe and enjoyable summer, and I’ll be back in touch again in early fall. Thank you again for your interest and all that you do for the Jackson School.

Reşat Kasaba
Director – Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies
Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies