Mailing address
Taubman 162
Visions of Governance in the 21st Century Project
79 John F. Kennedy St.
Cambridge, MA, 02138
Joseph S. Nye
Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Contact:
Telephone: (617) 495-1123
Fax: (617)-496-3337
Email: Joseph_Nye@harvard.edu
Experience
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is Dean Emeritus of the Kennedy School, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, and a member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors. He joined the Harvard Faculty in 1964 and has served as Director of the Center for International Affairs, Dillon Professor of International Affairs, and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. From 1977 to 1979 he served as Deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993 and 1994 he was chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the President. In 1994 and 1995 he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. In all three agencies, he received distinguished service awards.
Dr. Nye is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Diplomacy and a member of the Executive Committee on the Trilateral Commission. He has served as Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, Director of the Institute for East-West Security Studies, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the American representative on the United Nations Advisory Committee on Disarmament Affairs, and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Institute of International Economics. Dr. Nye received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1958. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. In addition to teaching at Harvard, Dr. Nye has also taught for brief periods in Geneva, Ottawa, and London. He has lived for extended periods in Europe, East Africa, and Central America.
AP Photo
January 26, 2010
"Davos: What's the Point?"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"What good does it do? After attending nearly a score of annual meetings over the years, I have noticed that the conventional wisdom — whether gloom and doom or rise and shine — that summarizes each meeting often proves misleading. But to the extent that this little village in the Alps gets top leaders to raise their eyes above their inboxes and spend even a little time on global and humanitarian issues, it probably helps."
AP Photo
January 13, 2010
"Is Military Power Becoming Obsolete?"
Op-Ed, The Korea Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"Armed groups view conflict as a continuum of political and violent irregular operations over a long period that will provide control over local populations. They benefit from the fact that scores of weak states lack the legitimacy or capacity to control their own territory effectively."
AP Photo
January 7, 2010
"An Alliance Larger Than One Issue"
Op-Ed, New York Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"This year is the 50th anniversary of the United States–Japan security treaty. The two countries will miss a major opportunity if they let the base controversy lead to bitter feelings or the further reduction of American forces in Japan. The best guarantee of security in a region where China remains a long-term challenge and a nuclear North Korea poses a clear threat remains the presence of American troops, which Japan helps to maintain with generous host nation support."
AP Photo
December 15, 2009
"Testing Obama's Foreign Policy"
Op-Ed, Business Daily, (Africa)
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...critics on the left have complained that he has not been able to get Congress to pass a tough energy bill before the Copenhagen conference on climate change. But Obama has helped to persuade China and India to announce useful efforts, and he will set an American target of reducing greenhouse emissions that should prevent the conference from being a failure."
AP Photo
November 11, 2009
"South Korea's Growing Soft Power"
Op-Ed, Daily Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...South Korea has the resources to produce soft power, and its soft power is not prisoner to the geographical limitations that have constrained its hard power throughout its history. As a result, South Korea is beginning to design a foreign policy that will allow it to play a larger role in the international institutions and networks that will be essential to global governance."
AP Photo
November 9, 2009
"Who Caused the End of the Cold War?"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"Ultimately the deepest causes of Soviet collapse were the decline of communist ideology and the failure of the Soviet economy. This would have happened even without Gorbachev. In the early Cold War, communism and the Soviet Union had a good deal of soft power. Many communists had led the resistance against fascism in Europe, and many people believed that communism was the wave of the future....Although in theory communism aimed to instill a system of class justice, Lenin's heirs maintained domestic power through a brutal state security system involving lethal purges, gulags, broad censorship, and the use of informants. The net effect of these repressive measures was a general loss of faith in the system."
AP Photo
Summer 2009
"Hard Decisions on Soft Power: Opportunities and Difficulties for Chinese Soft Power"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Harvard International Review, issue 2, volume 31
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Wang Jisi
"But just as China's economic and military power does not yet match that of the United States, China's soft power still has a long way to go as demonstrated by a Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll. China does not have cultural industries like Hollywood, and its universities are not yet the equal of the United States. It lacks the many non-governmental organizations that generate much of US soft power. Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. While that may make the "Beijing consensus" attractive in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing countries, it undercuts China's soft power in the West. Although China's new diplomacy has enhanced its attractiveness to its neighbors in Southeast Asia, the belligerence of its hard power stance toward Taiwan hurt it in Europe when China sought to persuade Europeans to relax their embargo on the sale of arms. Given the domestic problems that China must still overcome, there are limits to China's ability to attract others, but one would be foolish to ignore the gains the country is making."
AP Photo
October 13, 2009
"U.S., Russia Must Lead on Arms Control"
Op-Ed, Politico
By General Brent Scowcroft, Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, R. Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics and Strobe Talbott
"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee cited Obama's dedication to arms control and nonproliferation when announcing last Friday his selection as this year's laureate. If he creates a positive, mutually reinforcing dynamic in the way he presents and sequences the two treaties [NPT and CTBT], it will give momentum and coherence to follow-on negotiations and the agreements that they produce."
AP Photo
October 13, 2009
"Obama's Nuclear Agenda"
Op-Ed, Daily News Egypt
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"So long as the world remains a dangerous place with several nuclear weapons states, Obama must reassure its allies about the credibility of American guarantees of extended deterrence. Otherwise, reductions that create anxieties in other countries could lead them to develop their own weapons and thus increase the number of nuclear weapons states."
AP Photo
September 14, 2009
"American Power in 21st Century"
Op-Ed, The Korea Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
The problem for American power in the 21st century is that there are more and more things outside the control of even the most powerful state. Although the U.S. does well on military measures, there is much going on that those measures fail to capture.
