The society was founded on 11 March 2005 by academics and students at Cambridge, including Brendan Simms, Alan Mendoza, Gideon Mailer, James Rogers and Matthew Jamison. It was named after Henry M. Jackson, a Democratic Senator from Washington state who was a civil rights advocate and anticommunist liberal hawk. Jackson was respected by conservative leaders like Ronald Reagan who praised him for his bipartisanship:Scoop Jackson was convinced that there's no place for partisanship in foreign and defense policy. He used to say, "In matters of national security, the best politics is no politics." His sense of bipartisanship was not only natural and complete; it was courageous.It organises meetings with speakers in the House of Commons. The society claims that it advocates an interventionist foreign-policy that promotes human rights and reduces suffering, by both non-military and military methods, when appropriate.