University of Washington Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies is a school within the University of Washington's College of Arts and Sciences, in Seattle, Washington. The school's name honors Henry M. Jackson, a former U.S. Senator from the state of Washington.

The Jackson School manages undergraduate and graduate academic programs in International Studies and regional studies. In addition to International Studies, the undergraduate programs include Asian, Canadian, European, Latin American, and Jewish studies, as well as comparative religion. The graduate programs include China; Japan; Korea; Middle East; Russian, East European and Central Asian; South Asian; and Southeast Asian studies; as well as comparative religion.

The Jackson School also hosts eight National Resource Centers, listed below:

  • Canadian Studies Center
  • Center for Global Studies
  • Center for West European Studies
  • East Asia Center
  • Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies
  • Middle East Center
  • South Asia Center
  • Southeast Asia Center

The school claims a "commitment to regional, cross-cultural, and comparative studies" and offers interdisciplinary, courses cross-listed with other departments and with faculty specializing in academic fields ranging from economics to sociology to geography. While the various programs allow for a variety of approaches to study, the general international studies program has a strong emphasis on international political economy.

In addition to university professors, the Jackson School also invites practitioners of foreign affairs to teach certain undergraduate and graduate courses. These include former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Darryl N. Johnson and Washington state Congressman Adam Smith.

Famous quotes containing the words university, washington, jackson, school and/or studies:

    I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    ... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.
    Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)

    [Government’s] true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves—in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence, not in its control, but in its protection, not in binding the states more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.
    Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)

    Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if he had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material ...
    Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)