Neal Blue ’57 returns to Yale’s campus each year as an advisory board member of the Jackson School of Global Affairs. During one of his annual dinners with Jim Levinsohn, the school’s dean, conversation turned to a recurring topic—how to best prepare future leaders for a world where international relations are rapidly changing.

Several principles emerged: First, students require an essential grounding in statecraft, exploring questions of national defense, diplomacy, intelligence, and international economic relations. Second, they are best served by the Jackson School’s hallmark approach of engaging both expert faculty and visiting practitioners who bring real-world experience to their scholarship and teaching roles.

The outcome of that conversation was the Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment, established in 2024 with generous funding from Blue. Focused on statecraft, the center supports teaching, research, professorships, and fellowships for Jackson School students and for visiting scholars.

“Our mission has always been to educate future leaders,” says Levinsohn, “and I am deeply grateful to Neal for his farsighted support. The Blue Center has already elevated Jackson as one of the foremost programs in the country for the study of security and statecraft, and it has a bright future.”

An International Perspective

The chairman and CEO of General Atomics, Blue has long developed an international perspective, not to mention a taste for adventure. While an undergraduate at Yale, he and his brother Linden Blue ’58 traversed 25,000 miles of South America in a single-propeller plane, crossing the Andes, the Amazon Basin, and the Caribbean. LIFE Magazine featured the “Flying Blue Brothers” on its cover in 1957. After Yale, Blue went on to serve in the US Air Force.

These experiences would also influence Blue’s business career. In 1986, the brothers acquired General Atomics, a nuclear energy and technology company. Under their careful stewardship, the company grew to become a world leader in energy and defense research and technology development. A key to the company’s success was Neal Blue’s appreciation for the subtle but important nuances of international relations and statecraft.

“It is highly beneficial for students at the Jackson School, and across Yale, to learn from practitioners with knowledge based upon real-world experience,” says Blue. “It is impressive to observe the activities of the Blue Center, which in just one year has opened new avenues for students and produced impactful scholarship.”

Connecting Students with Practitioners

To realize his vision for the Blue Center, Levinsohn appointed Phil Kaplan ’12, ’20 JD as the center’s inaugural executive director. Among his first tasks was to offer students a chance to focus and accelerate their learning through courses taught by top faculty, military personnel, and diplomats. Today, the Blue Center provides funding to defray research-related costs for students pursuing projects related to statecraft at the Jackson School, and it brings in speakers and professors with firsthand knowledge so that students can learn from their experiences.

“Part of the way that students can learn about statecraft is by being exposed to people who are actually doing it,” says Kaplan. The speakers brought in by the Blue Center to date include the Biden administration national security advisor, the EU ambassador to the United States, and the prime ministers of Iceland and Kosovo.

The center also brings Blue Senior Fellows to campus each semester. Its inaugural fellow was Theresa May, who served as the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2019. In July, General Timothy Haugh was named a Blue Senior Fellow for the fall 2025 semester. Haugh served more than thirty years in the US Air Force and directed the National Security Agency. He has spent the semester at Jackson, teaching a course on cybersecurity and sharing his experiences with students and faculty.

The Blue Center facilitates several courses, including on national security, artificial intelligence, Chinese foreign policy, and separatist movements, among many other topics. A course on the outer space domain and global security this past spring was co-taught by Yale’s ROTC commander, Colonel Les Oberg.