Joseph Nye
American political scientist (1937–2025)
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Nye was the Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he later held the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus. In October 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He was also a member of the Defense Policy Board. He was a Harvard faculty member since 1964. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a foreign fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.
The 2011 Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) survey of over 1,700 international relations scholars ranked Nye as the sixth most influential scholar in the field of international relations in the past 20 years. He was also ranked as one of the most influential figures in American foreign policy. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine included him on its list of top global thinkers. In September 2014, Foreign Policy reported that international relations scholars and policymakers ranked Nye as one of the field's most influential scholars.
Early life, family and education
Nye was born in South Orange, New Jersey, the third of four children born to Joseph, a bond trader and equities firm lead; and Else Ashwell Nye. Joseph Sr. did not graduate high school or college, but Else was a college graduate. Joseph Jr. had two older sisters and a younger sister. For most of his youth, the family resided on a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in New Vernon, New Jersey.
He attended Morristown Prep (later the Morristown–Beard School) in Morristown, New Jersey, graduating in 1954. He then attended Princeton University, also in New Jersey, where he was vice president of the Colonial Club, a columnist for The Daily Princetonian, and a member of the American Whig–Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history in 1958. His senior thesis was Death of a Family Firm: An Entrepreneurial History of the American Preserve Company. Nye was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and won the Myron T. Herrick Thesis Prize. He was among 32 students selected as a Rhodes Scholar and chose to attend Oxford University's Exeter College, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).
In 1964, he obtained his PhD in political science from Harvard University, studying under Henry Kissinger and J. K. Galbraith. Nye's doctoral dissertation was on regional integration in East Africa.
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Career
In 1964, the same year Nye received his doctorate, he joined the Harvard faculty. He was Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1985 to 1990 and was Associate Dean for International Affairs at Harvard from 1989 to 1992. In 1968, he became the Carnegie Endowment International Peace Scholar and taught at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Nye also was Director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard from 1989 to 1993 and Dean of John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1995 to 2004. Nye was a University Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus.
Nye and his colleague Keohane have been characterized as key figures in the development of a discipline of international political economy, largely as a result of their authorship of Power and Interdependence. Nye's influences include Karl Deutsch and Ernst Hass.
From 1977 to 1979, Nye was 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 recognition of his service, he was awarded the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award in 1979. In 1993 and 1994, he was Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the President, and was awarded the Intelligence Community's Distinguished Service Medal. In the Clinton Administration from 1994 to 1995, Nye served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and was awarded the Department's Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster. He was responsible for the Nye Initiative and co-wrote a series of reports on the Japan-US alliance with his friend Richard Armitage. In 1999, during a visit to Singapore, Nye suggested to Lee Kuan Yew that Singapore should set up a version of London's Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park to allow public speaking, which Singapore then created its own Speaker's Corner at Hong Lim Park in 2000. Nye was considered by many to be the preferred choice for National Security Advisor in the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry.
He was the chairman of the North American branch of the Trilateral Commission and the co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group. He was also a member of the Atlantic Council's Board of Directors. Nye also served as a trustee of Radcliffe College and Wells College. He was on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Guiding Coalition of the Project on National Security Reform, the advisory board of Carolina for Kibera, and the Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize by Princeton University and the Charles E. Merriman Prize by the American Political Science Association. In 2005, he was awarded the Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College Dublin and was awarded honorary degrees by ten colleges and universities. In 2010, Nye won the Foreign Policy Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association. In 2009, he was made a Theodore Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
In October 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, a group that meets periodically to discuss strategic questions and to provide the Secretary and other senior department officials with independent informed perspectives and ideas. In November 2014, Nye was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star in recognition of his "contribution to the development of studies on Japan-U.S. security and to the promotion of the mutual understanding between Japan and the United States."
Nye served as a Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance, and served on the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace from 2017 until its conclusion in 2019. He served on the global Advisory Council for CFK Africa, a leading NGO working in Kenyan informal settlements.
Nye coined the term soft power in the late 1980s, and it first came into widespread usage following a piece he wrote in Foreign Policy in 1990. Nye consistently wrote for Project Syndicate since 2002.
Significant views
Nye was a neo-liberal.
In Nye's view, analysis of collective security systems requires consideration of economic matters. Matters of collective economic security include common goods, the presence or absence of trade restrictions, and distribution of profits between countries.
Personal life
Nye married Molly (Mary) Harding in 1961. They had three sons: John, Benjamin and Daniel. Nye was a member of a Unitarian Universalist Association church. Molly was a ceramics artist, art gallery leader and art consultant. She died about five months before her husband.
Nye resided in Lexington, Massachusetts, as well as in Europe, East Africa, and Central America, and he traveled to over 90 countries. His hobbies commonly involved the outdoors; he enjoyed camping, fly fishing, hiking, gardening (including horticultural activities at his 900-acre (360 ha) New Hampshire tree farm). He played squash and was an avid skier.
Nye's last residence was at Brookhaven, a retirement community in Lexington. He died at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 6, 2025, at the age of 88.