Jett was United States Ambassador to Peru from 1996 to 1999. He attended a reception at the Japanese ambassadorial residence in Lima on December 17, 1996, but left the gathering early, narrowly escaping becoming a hostage, when members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement stormed the residence and held hundreds hostage for 126 days in the incident known as the Japanese embassy hostage crisis. Jett received his Ph.D. in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1998. His dissertation, "Why Peacekeeping Fails," was published by. Jett was noted as a critic of American citizenLori Berenson, who is imprisoned in Peru for her association with MRTA members; he was unsympathetic when a human rights delegation, including Berenson's parents, came to visit in March 1999. In February 2002 Jett wrote an op-ed published in the Washington Post entitled "No Tears for Terrorists," in which he likened Berenson to John Walker Lindh and said Berenson was a terrorist who exercised "monumentally bad judgment." Berenson's parents said that Jett's article was "intensely poisonous" and contained "outrageously mean-spirited, blatantly inaccurate, and erroneous statements about her to discredit support for her release from her wrongful six-year and four-month incarceration." After years of denials by her parents, in mid-2010 Berenson confessed that she had knowing aided the MRTA when she wrote to the pardon commission and to Peruvian President Alan Garcia admitting to her "criminal collaboration with a terrorist organization."http://www.peruviantimes.com/guilt-repentance-and-innocence-lori-berenson-and-her-baby-might-be-going-back-to-prison/206625 In October 2011, the Christian Science Monitor profiled Jett in an article on leadership. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2011/1129/Leadership-A-constructive-rebel-bucks-hierarchy He frequently contributes op ed pieces to the McClatchy newspapers and other publications, which are also on the Huffington Post.
Academic career
From 2000 to 2008, Jett served as dean of the International Center and lecturer of political science at the University of Florida. He was the moderator when U.S. Senator John Kerry came to the UF to speak on September 17, 2007, when the Taser incident occurred. In spring of 2008, he taught Making American Foreign Policy at the University of Florida. In the summer 2008 he moved to the Pennsylvania State University to become part of the inaugural faculty of the newly created School of International Affairs. Jett's second book, Why American Foreign Policy Fails was published in May 2008. His third book, "American Ambassadors - The Past, Present and Future of America's Diplomats," was published in 2014. Jett received the James F. Zimmerman Award from the University of New Mexico Alumni Association in 2001.
