The Aspen Strategy Group deeply mourns the loss of Joe Nye, one of our “founding three,” who, along with Brent Scowcroft and Bill Perry, created the Strategy Group over forty years ago.
Joe gave us our organization’s mission, led us through difficult times and times of great triumph for the country and the world. We honor his deep personal integrity, sense of humor, intellect, and his dear friendship to all of us.
Joe was an icon in the field of international relations. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1964, famously coined the theory of ‘soft power,’ and became one of the most revered intellectuals of his generation. He also lived his values: serving in government multiple times and staying deeply engaged in policies ranging from U.S.-China and Asia relations to cybersecurity and a deep interest in technology’s effects on foreign affairs. Last spring he flew 8,000 miles to Beijing with us to do his best to put U.S.-China relations on a healthier path.
We in the Aspen Strategy Group revered and loved him. Joe epitomized the ethics and humility reflected in the Hippocratic oath, like a medical doctor: he dedicated his life to the service of humanity. He pledged first to do no harm. He maintained the utmost respect for human life and carried out his profession with conscience, humility, and dignity.
Joe, we learned so much from you, and we are grateful for your wisdom, your deep intellect, your mentorship, your love of fishing and the outdoors, and your irrepressible sense of fun.
We are poorer for your loss, but infinitely richer for your life.
Tributes:
“Joe Nye made countless deep and enduring impacts as a scholar, teacher, mentor, leader and a co-founder and guiding light of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Strategy Group. We will miss him, and will continue his work with great pride and gratitude for his life of service.” – Dan Porterfield
“Joe has been the heart and soul of the Aspen Strategy Group for forty years. Present at its creation, he has been Chair or Executive Director for the full length of its history and the embodiment of its major purpose—the nonpartisan study of America’s role in the world.
I first met Joe at an ASG summer meeting he chaired in 1993 on U.S.-Russia relations. All the qualities that define him and his stewardship of the ASG were on full display at that meeting: his cool, objective analytical frame of mind, his immense breadth of knowledge and perspective, his fairness and commitment to bring Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together in common cause.
I will always treasure the twelve years I worked alongside Joe when I was ASG Executive Director. There are a thousand memories—Joe holding forth around a campfire, hiking up to the Continental Divide, traveling together for ASG meetings in Beijing, Delhi, Venice and São Paulo. Joe always at the center, leading us, coaxing us to listen to each other, to be fair-minded, with the search for America’s path forward always at the center of his thoughts.” – Nicholas Burns
“Joe had a PhD in Political Science, but I’ve always thought of him as the person in foreign policy who best embodied the Hippocratic Oath:
Joe dedicated his life to serving humanity; did no harm; led with conscience, humility, and dignity—and never stopped learning or using his knowledge for good.
We first met in 1999, when he was Dean of the Kennedy School and I was a law student, nervously pitching him to collaborate with Anne-Marie and me on a Berlin Wall conference. Joe said yes without hesitation: his enthusiasm was contagious, and I was struck by how generous and inspiring he was.
Over the years—from Aspen trips to India, Brazil, and even China, where he flew 8,000 miles with us last year (!) to keep a vital relationship alive— his energy and intellect never waned.
From working in an Alaskan mining camp… to living in Uganda and Guatemala… to advising Presidents and becoming a cyber expert in his late 70s, your life is a model of purpose and lifelong growth.
We are so proud to call Joe our Aspen Strategy Group founder and guiding light.” – Anja Manuel
“He possessed a rare combination of intelligences. Not only did he have an amazingly insightful mind regarding all issues national security and geopolitical but he had a warmth and grace that made all feel heard and seen.” – Penny Pritzker
“Joe was a brilliant thinker and leader and a wonderful friend. Joe will be greatly missed by all of us who were fortunate to know and work with him and by our Nation.” – Sam Nunn
“Joe Nye was my super power: whether it’s soft power or hard power, with him it was always smart power. I think we first met in the mid-80s, but honestly it’s hard to imagine not knowing him. Joe mentored me on defense and security issues, and pushed me for a variety of posts while I was in and since out of Congress. How special to have him as an advocate! We’ve seen each other for a quarter century in Aspen too: I have no idea how many ‘Scowcroft death marches’ we’ve been on together, or how many lovely dinners we’ve had with Joe and Molly. Or how many times I’ve watched his skill managing the Aspen Strategy Group—first with Brent and then with Condi and now with Nick Burns as co-chair. Always a master class. And how honored I was when asked to ‘blurb’ his recent memoir, which chronicles a dazzling personal journey (so far). Joe was a national treasure and my selfish wish was for him to stay in my life FOREVER.” – Jane Harman
Joseph Nye and Jane Harman at the 2024 Aspen Strategy Group Summer Workshop
“Forget all the stuff about ‘soft power.’ It was always Joe Nye’s way of keeping academics busy debating about some intriguing theory at conferences held in fabulous places, with Joe the revered keynote speaker.
If you really wanted to understand Joe’s approach to navigating the world, you had to watch him in the rivers of Aspen, or better yet Alaska, where the challenge is harder. In life and in hunting down trout and salmon, Joe taught us all how to ‘read the river,’ figuring out not only where it was flowing, and when it might risk overflowing the banks, but also how to deal with the wildlife lurking beneath.
I vividly remember when Joe, who had taught me introductory diplomatic relations when I was too young and ignorant to understand what he was saying, took me out on the river for my first real lesson. By now I was in my mid-to-late 30s, and Joe had concluded it was possible I might be capable of learning something.
He pointed out how the river broke around big boulders, creating a backwater on the far side, protected from the current. The fish would lurk there, he explained, facing upriver, waiting for something good to flow around the rock. They would seek the right kind of gravel river bottom to lay their eggs.
‘They are lazy,’ Joe explained. ‘Mostly they think about food and sex. Like politicians.’ He named a few, but those will have to remain on the river.
The lesson didn’t stop there. To watch Joe on the river is to soak in a lesson in discipline. He checks the water temperature, knowing it will affect how deep the fish are lurking. He divides the river into sectors in his mind, casting in each one—not too long, because he knows the fish will tire of seeing the same artificial fly. He wastes no time.
And he is always more successful than anyone else: There is nothing more infuriating than fishing a section of river, concluding that nothing is there, and then watching Joe come up behind you, pulling fish out from behind the rocks left and right.
Mostly he throws them back in. If there is a keeper for dinner or breakfast the next morning, he takes out his long knife and guts the fish right by the side of the river. No soft power there. ‘It doesn’t work for everything,’ he conceded once.
But it works most of the time. Soft power is about getting the world to follow the power of your quiet example. We all benefit from approaching the world the way he does. In life, in diplomacy, in journalism—and in fishing—you have to start by reading the river.
A teacher in the classroom and on the river. A perfect blend of the theoretical and the practical. A role model who understands the necessity of balance in all things done well. Thanks, Joe.” – David Sanger
“Joe Nye was the rarest of academic mentors. He excelled in all phases of the core academic mission – research, teaching, mentoring, university service and public engagement – and could have been a recruiting poster figure for any one of them. All junior academics could measure themselves against the ‘Joe Nye plumbline’ on any of these dimensions and conclude, ‘well, I am not as good as he is on that attribute but it is something I can aim for.’ He was serious – I can remember numerous times when after a day of intense conferencing Joe still wanted to analyze this or that arcane angle of a policy problem instead of engaging in trivial chit-chat. Yet he did not take himself over-seriously. He was beloved precisely because he balanced his sober academic pursuits with equally zealous passions pursuing fishing, gardening, and squash. His kind laugh at a joke, even one at his expense, will always be one of my most cherished memories from decades of following in his footsteps. But perhaps his most lasting and profound legacy for me was his optimism about America and the role America could and should play in the world. There was not a scintilla of naivete in that optimism – he could admire the problem as well as any cynic – but he understood the great pillars of American strength and purpose better than most participants and observers of American strategy. It is a great tragedy to lose Joe at precisely this moment when America needs to relearn these fundamental truths. May that loss motivate all of us to measure ourselves against his plumbline and redouble our efforts to follow his example.” – Peter Feaver
“Joe Nye was a superior intellect, a thought leader, a devoted historian, and most of all the nicest person! The one who always tried to bring in new ideas and people for a balanced look at the issues. He was a leader in every respect. He will be missed by all whose lives he touched.” – Kay Bailey Hutchison
“Joe Nye shaped at least two generations, maybe three. I have no idea how many lives he touched over his long and extraordinary career, but I am deeply grateful to be one of them. Two moments stay with me: the day in 1998 when, as Dean of the Kennedy School, he called to offer me a faculty position; and the day in 2000 when I called him to ask for a leave to serve in the incoming Bush administration, which he granted without hesitation. I can only imagine how many such conversations Joe had over the years—each one marked by grace, generosity, and quiet impact. Thank you, Joe, for your brilliance, your extraordinary kindness, and your humanity. I am honored not just to have known you but to have been your friend.” – Richard Falkenrath
“Joe modelled a remarkably whole and integrated life. There was no demarcation between his brilliant and original thinking and his teaching or counseling of friends. His love of nature and its streams gave larger context for his ambitious ideas. As Joe helped us all understand the world and set objectives for our work in it, he also encouraged us and set ambitions for each of us. I will deeply miss Joe’s generous and stimulating friendship.” – Zoë Baird
“I read Power and Interdependence as an undergraduate studying international relations in the late 1970s and took it as gospel. I went to Oxford to get a M.Phil in IR from 1980-82, and sometime during that period it was announced that Joseph Nye was coming to give a talk at Brasenose College. I can still remember that crisp fall night, walking across the cobblestones past the Radcliffe Camera, to a relatively small lecture hall within Brasenose’s 600-year-old walls in the very heart of Oxford. Joe was introduced and began to speak; I sat in awe.
I can no longer remember what Joe spoke about; it was the early Reagan administration, so he may well have been advancing ideas about hawks, doves, and owls—the same basic framework he used so powerfully later in launching the idea of soft power and then relating it to smart power. What I do remember is sitting there, listening, and thinking that I had never heard someone speak so powerfully and perfectly. Every word followed the last like a string of pearls: nuanced, original, witty, mellifluous, unerring. In short, I was dazzled. I can still picture him standing at the podium in my mind, the first of probably 100+ times I have heard him speak. I walked out of the lecture thinking that I had to find a way to work with him in some way. In the fall of 1982, when I arrived at Harvard Law School, one of the first things I did was march down to the Kennedy School and ask him if I could be a teaching assistant for Historical Studies A-12, the Harvard core introduction to IR. Joe said yes, and I have been trying to follow in his footsteps in one way or another ever since.
I wrote the above paragraphs last summer, as a tribute to Joe that I expected he and Molly would read. Knowing now that I will never talk to him again, I am conscious of a huge hole in my universe. Seeing all the pictures of Joe in the various tributes that are circulating just makes it harder to believe that he will not be at another Princeton reunion, Harvard seminar, Oxford lecture, Aspen summer, or global conference. I have seen him so often in all these places. I am also hearing from not only from the many friends and mentees that I knew he had, but from so many more whose lives he touched through advice, friendship, and the power of his example.
Joe was a Princetonian; it was one of the bonds we shared. He is probably the first person I turned to when I became dean of what was then the Woodrow Wilson School; he was still dean of the Kennedy School and I once again took him as a role model. I remember so clearly seeing him over the years in his Class of ’58 Reunion jacket, a particularly loud version with vertical stripes of black and orange. That image will stay with me at Reunions in years to come. I will also think of him when I walk the towpath between Lake Carnegie and the Delaware-Raritan canal. I remember his descriptions of running there in his novel, The Power Game. No one thought he should give up his day job to write fiction! Still, his success in writing and publishing in a different genre embodied a particular ideal to which all Princetonians of his and my generations aspired: to be a Renaissance man or woman, to be able to do as wide a variety of things as possible with at least a modicum of accomplishment. Joe achieved that ideal as well as anyone I have ever known.
Although I will miss him terribly, as we all will, the power and inspiration of his example will be with me for the rest of my life.” – Anne-Marie Slaughter
“Joe Nye changed my life. Entering college I had no interest in or knowledge of international relations. Out of curiosity during my freshman year I took his introductory course on the subject, Gov 40, and by the end of that term, I was hooked. Joe sparked that and for the next half century continued to offer guidance and wisdom across a vast array of subjects, most recently a conversation we had about AI in his office at Belfer just last month. He inspired not only by the force of his example, but by his kindness. He treated eager young students with patience and respect. I remember how honored I was to be included in a conversation in Paul Doty’s office after Jimmy Carter was elected and Joe was considering whether to join the State Department to lead nonproliferation policy. He was brilliant without being pompous. He could reach dramatic and profound conclusions through a crisp Cartesian logic that distilled the essence of a problem and then built a powerful solution that could seize the popular imagination, changing the way people thought and acted. Soft Power is now conventional wisdom, but it took Joe to distill the concept and embed it in our collective consciousness. We will miss him and continue to try to live by his example.” – Daniel Poneman
“A year or two into my PhD program at Harvard, I saw an invitation to a tribute for Joe celebrating him as he retired from teaching. This would have been around 2017. I had never met him before, and yet he had already had a huge impact on me as an aspiring scholar who had just resigned from the Foreign Service to study soft power and public diplomacy. I said as much at the tribute, and it was there that I would first come to meet Joe. He was generous with his time, allowing me to interview him for the dissertation and to discuss my ideas with him as I developed them. I would later join the Aspen Strategy Group as one of the younger members, and I came to know him as not only brilliant, but also kind and personable and supportive.
I learned the news of Joe’s passing as I was writing furiously, trying to finish one of my last few chapters of a book that I am writing about public diplomacy. Eight or nine months ago, after more than seven years of working on this project – first as a dissertation and then as a book – I finally worked up the nerve to send the manuscript to Joe. He was kind in his response, saying that even though he didn’t have time for a close read, he agreed with me as he leafed through the pages. I immediately gushed to my family that THE Joe Nye had validated my writing.
The last time I saw Joe in person was at the Aspen Strategy Group gathering of 2024. As I sat with Joe and Molly – another wonderful soul – they told me about their granddaughter, who had just gotten into Princeton, where I teach. I congratulated them and told them I hoped I’d see her on campus.
I’ve spent the past year on sabbatical, first in Oxford and then in Cairo. During this year away, I’ve had the time and space to think about the type of scholar that I wish to be as I work to complete this book. Joe has come to mind frequently – especially in Oxford, a place he held near and dear. (In fact, I sent him a postcard and a condolence card from there in late 2024, just to let him know that I was thinking of him.) The answer to my reflections is that I hope to be even just a little like Joe: thoughtful and relevant in my scholarship, wise and well-spoken in public, but more importantly, deeply kind and decent.
To me, Joe was and will always be a legend. I have learned so much from him, and he enriched my life significantly for all the time he poured into me. None of us were ready for him to be gone, but the truth is: someone like him is never truly gone anyway. His legacy lives on in all the people that he inspired and in his prolific work.
My prayers are with the Nye family for the recent losses of Joe and Molly. May we all be blessed forevermore with memories of them both.” – Naima Green-Riley
“Joe Nye was such an integral part of the Aspen Strategy Group. I had the privilege of working with him at the 2019 ASG. More broadly, I was fortunate to work in national security at a time when Joe was sharing his mentorship and scholarship with all of us. He was a major intellectual force informing my academic and professional work, from my time learning from him in the Clinton Admin, to my work at MIT, to his service on the board at CSIS, where I worked for many years….[I wanted] to share my own recollections of Joe’s kindness in a multitude of small acts over decades, which I hope ripple forward in how we all choose to engage within our own community and beyond.” – Kathleen Hicks
