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A Legacy of Leadership

  • Alumni
A Legacy of Leadership
Catherine Shakin '19

The Global Impact Dr. Karl Jackson '60

For forty years, Dr. Karl Jackson ’60 has been bridging the worlds of academia and government. He has spent his life trying to make a difference, from helping students in a war-torn country gain academic freedom to being appointed National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States. 

“The problem in government is that you have access to all the information in the world through these various secret channels, but you don’t know what any of it means. In academia, you don’t have access to all of that information, you have a whole series of theories. But, if you can put together the theories with the information by going into government, then you’ve got something going for you.”   

Some of the many titles Jackson has adorned over the course of his robust career in government service include Deputy Director for Policy Planning in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia on the National Security Council.  

He spent enough time with President George H. W. Bush to say that the former president is, in Jackson’s own words, “a terrific guy.” He also bonded with Vice President Dan Quayle over their mutual aversion to spelling, and he has sat in on meetings that involved major decisions that steered the fate of the United States.  

Throughout his career working in government relations, Jackson was also a professor. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, was a Scholar-in-Residence at the United Nations Asian and Pacific Development Institute in Bangkok and has served as a Distinguished Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University since 1996. He feels like his two careers have complemented each other nicely.  

While teaching at Berkeley, Jackson attended a conference in Bali. The person he was alphabetically assigned to sit next to during the conference turned out to be John Holdridge, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific. At the end of the conference, Holdridge invited Jackson to visit him the next time he was in Washington, D.C.  

Later, while Jackson was hoping to secure a Fulbright Scholarship, he did visit Holdridge. During their conversation, Holdridge told him, “You’ve already lived in Thailand and Indonesia, you already know those foreign cultures. The strange foreign culture that you don’t know is government, your own.”  

Following that discussion, Jackson was recommended for a job in the Defense Department working under Richard Armitage, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. After working there for several years, Jackson returned to Berkeley thinking he would never go back to government. That was until Armitage called him up and offered him a job as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and the Pacific. A few years later, he again thought he would return to Berkeley when President George H. W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, Brent Skowcroft, called him directly and offered him the opportunity to be the President’s Principal Advisor on Asia. Next, Jackson became the National Security Advisor for Vice President Dan Quayle. 

While Jackson credits much of these opportunities and successes to chance, one thing remains clear; no matter what he was doing, Jackson was having fun. 

“The quality of the people I was working with was just first rate,” he says of President Bush and Vice President Quayle. “It was great fun working in that particular administration. I think it would be miserable to be in government now because there are no friendships across the aisle.” 

Jackson’s closest friend on Capitol Hill at the time was Steve Solarz, a Democratic Congressman from New York. Even though Jackson represented the Republican Party, he and Solarz often got together for dinner to discuss the best ways to tackle issues and come up with solutions that satisfied them both. 

“There was a lot of camaraderie ... that made dealing with the actual issues themselves much easier. I think it’d be really hard now,” he says. “It wouldn’t pass Jim Wickenden’s requirement for compulsory politeness!” 

Jackson recalls a story about how even though he was one of two people who focused on all of Asia for the National Security Council, President Bush felt it was important to send them home for dinner every night. 

President Bush would say to his employees, “I don’t want zombies writing briefing papers for me. Go home at 6:30. You’ve got families to tend to.” 

Jackson speaks about major political figures as friends and neighbors, rather than just the pictures and news stories they are often portrayed as. It is little details like these that truly demonstrate the accomplishments and magnitude of Jackson’s career. 

Some of the career moments that Jackson is most proud of include playing a role in bringing the civil war in Cambodia to an end closing the Paris Peace Agreements of 1991 and managing to get a small educational establishment going at Rangoon University in Burma that briefly had complete academic freedom.  

“It was the only room in the country where open dialogue could take place,” says Jackson. “I’ve never had a set of students sit on the edges of their chairs like these kids in Burma did.” He keeps in touch with several of them, most of whom have fled due to the conflict in the country. 

Despite his impressive resume, Jackson admits there is more he would have liked to do during his career. He reflects, “Do I think I accomplished all I wanted to? No, but life is like that. I’ve had incredibly good fortune, especially the good fortune of my family. Everyone’s healthy and successful; come on! How could life be any better than this?” 

He continues, “And did Tabor have something to do with it? Yes! They pushed me out the door with that confidence to take advantage of those opportunities that fell into my lap, as well as to make a few opportunities along the way. It is not by chance that every year I write a check to Tabor. It was just a great experience, and I always contribute on the off chance that somebody else can have the same kind of formative and positive experience.” 

Tabor Academy made a lasting impact on Jackson’s life. At 82 years old, he animatedly recalls the sporting games he played in, the teachers who influenced him, and the lessons he learned while he was a student at the School by the Sea.  

“I loved being there. It fundamentally shaped my life,” he says. “It’s an incredible institution, and I hope it maintains its ability to take people and transform them into something else, because that certainly was the case with me.” 

Jackson also mentions that Tabor was a very different place in the late 1950s, owing not only to Tabor being a Naval Honor school and the fact that the students were boys, but also to the faculty and their teaching methods. He details a long list of teachers and the impressions they left on him from his time at Tabor. One of them includes Jules Luchini, his Spanish teacher, football coach, and the head of the military operations at the school. Luchini used to motivate the students by saying, “Have that old confidence,” something that Jackson still quotes today. “He did inspire confidence in this ragged group who would be street urchins,” laughs Jackson. “He was terrific.”  

Jackson goes on to name Jim and Nancy Wickenden as the leaders of the school who instilled values in him that have lasted his entire life. He also recalls the great Joe Smart, an English teacher whose no-nonsense teaching philosophy Jackson later adopted as his own. Joe Smart was the epitome of high standards and perfection in schooling. 

“I taught for forty years at the university level, and I always invoked Joe Smart,” says Jackson.  

He also fondly recalls the story of how he ended up going to Princeton. He was on his way to lunch, on crutches from a football injury, when Jim Gowing, former Senior Master and Chair of the English Department, stopped him. Gowing asked Jackson to interview with the Princeton Deputy Director of Admissions as a favor because no one else had signed up. Jackson made his way to the interview, glanced at the catalog, and somehow managed to charm the interviewer with a conversation that discussed both the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton and what bar rooms in Fort Lauderdale were the best to visit during spring break. 

“It was completely inappropriate!” says Jackson. “I had done everything possible to destroy that interview.”  

He was shocked when Gowing approached him at dinner and asked him if he was serious about Princeton because there was a spot for him if he wanted it.  

Jackson ended up attending the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, but before he went, he was the Tabor awardee of the English-Speaking Union Schoolboy Fellowship. Prior to college, Jackson spent a year in the UK, which he claims is what led him to his career in international affairs. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Princeton in 1965, Jackson decided to get his Doctorate in political science from MIT. “My career was a bit like the story of how I got into Princeton,” he jokes, citing “The Random Walk” of life. “There are many things that are random and lucky.” 

In 2010, Jackson won Tabor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which he says is the award he most highly prizes, even though he has also won the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. 

“Tabor launched me, and then Tabor recognized that their effort in launching me had turned into something,” he notes. “That’s very nice.” 

Now, Jackson is enjoying a busy retirement. He is writing a book, active in his Annapolis neighborhood, and providing testimony for a Washington, D.C. law firm representing the construction companies that expanded the canal. He is doing all of this while spending time with his four kids, five grandkids, and new puppy. And, he is planning to attend his upcoming 65th reunion at Tabor in June of 2025. 

“My problem is to find enough hours in the day,” he says. 

When asked what advice he would give to the students graduating from Tabor now, Jackson says, “Take advantage of the opportunities that come to you—like being injured on the way to lunch and ending up going to Princeton as a result, or sitting down at a conference in Bali [next to someone] whose last name is H and mine is J and therefore finding my way into government. Take advantage of those things that come your way. Live life to its fullest. Continue to strive for the values that you were taught at Tabor. Life is a random walk! [and to quote Jules Luchini] Have that old confidence!”