Jackson Janes

Jackson Janes is a resident senior fellow at GMF and president emeritus of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) in Washington, DC. He has been affiliated with AICGS since 1989. The institute was recently renamed the American-German Institute. 

Janes has been engaged in German-American affairs in numerous capacities over many years. He studied and taught at German universities in Freiburg, Giessen, and Tübingen. He was the director of the German-American Institute in Tübingen (1977-1980) and of the European office of GMF in Bonn (1980-1985). He served as director of program development at the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh (1986-1988) and was chair of the German-Speaking Areas in Europe Program at the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (1999-2000).

Janes is the honorary president of the International Association for the Study of German Politics and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves on the advisory boards of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee and the Zeitschrift für Aussen- und Sicherheitspolitik (ZfAS). He is a former board member of the German-American Fulbright Commission and a former member of the selection committee for the Bundeskanzler Fellowships for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Janes has lectured throughout Europe and the United States and has published extensively on issues dealing with Germany, German-American relations, and transatlantic affairs. In addition to regular commentary given to European and US news radio, he has appeared on CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, and CBC, and is a frequent commentator on German broadcast outlets.  

Janes holds a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University, a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in international relations from Claremont Graduate University. In 2005, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the country’s highest civilian award.