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"I SPEND A LOT OF TIME with the chain saw.”
The statement seems somewhat incongruous given the bearing
of its speaker. Described by colleagues as “elegant,”
“patrician,” and “wise,” Joseph S. Nye,
Jr. — outgoing dean of the John F. Kennedy School of
Government — is not the first person you’d imagine
wielding a large, loud piece of equipment. When he describes
the simple, restorative qualities of clearing brush on his
New Hampshire farm, however, it all makes perfect sense. For
what becomes clear after talking to Nye and the people who
know him in his many roles — as scholar, friend, teacher,
public servant, father, and husband — is that this is
a man with a sly sense of humor who brings a quiet passion
and intensity to all pursuits, be they intellectual, physical,
or, as is the case with fly-fishing (a long-term obsession),
a combination of the two.
After joining Harvard’s faculty in 1964, Nye has been
an “in and outer” of the highest order, distinguishing
himself as an author of seminal works on international strategy
and policy and as an award-winning public servant. “Joe
is that rare combination of genuine scholar and skilled practitioner,”
says Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, who worked with Nye at the
Pentagon when he was assistant secretary of defense under
Clinton in 1994 and 1995. “As a scholar, he truly enjoys
the opportunity academia offers to build intellectual capital.
In government, he is extremely effective. He is happy in his
skin in both worlds.”
“His work has always been informed by what is important
in a policy context,” observes Fen Hampson, a former
student of Nye’s who is now director of the Norman Paterson
School of International Affairs at Carleton University in
Ottawa. “There can be a lot of fussy theorizing in academia,
but Joe has always been engaged by very real problems and
concerns in international relations.”
One such challenge while Nye was assistant secretary of defense
was the growing tension in U.S.–Japan relations after
three American soldiers were charged with kidnapping and raping
a Japanese schoolgirl in 1995. The incident caused many Japanese
to question the U.S. military presence in their country and
led Nye to author a new security policy for Asia. “It
still stands to this day as the definitive document in that
area,” says former Secretary of Defense William Perry.
“It was an enormously creative task and amazingly influential.
But what is really unusual is how everyone lined up behind
the new policy — it was so thoughtful and compelling.”
“Joe leads in the best way, which is by listening to
everyone’s best ideas, then getting a consensus around
the best of the best,” notes Kennedy School Professor
Ash Carter, who worked alongside Nye as assistant secretary
of defense.
“He’s a great believer in meritocracy,” says
Al Carnesale, who preceded Nye as dean. “He recognizes
an idea for its value, rather than the stature of its source.”
“This is a tremendously talented and unusual guy,”
remarks John Deutch, former deputy secretary of defense and
director of the CIA. “When an important issue is on the
table he manages to get everyone to work together to make
a real contribution to world politics.”
IT SEEMS NO SMALL COINCIDENCE that the home in which Nye
has lived since 1965 is located on the battle green in Lexington,
the birthplace of American liberty. Bear left at the Minuteman
statue, his wife, Molly, will tell visitors finding their
way to the gracious white Colonial. (Probably one of the few
in town with a chicken coop out back.) Joe’s younger
sister, Ellie, introduced Molly Harding and Joe Nye in New
Vernon, New Jersey, when she was 14 and he was 17. “Joe
seemed very serious, so that was quite daunting,” she
recalls. Even so, Molly asked him to a tea dance at her high
school. The two stayed in touch but dated other people when
Joe went to Princeton.
Molly attended Wells College, and remembers that Joe came
to visit her not long before he sailed to Oxford, England,
on a Rhodes scholarship. “I went to see him off without
telling my mother. She was not happy,” says Molly Nye.
“While he was away I cut hair for girls at the college
to pay for long-distance calls to England.” The pair
became secretly engaged and married five days after Molly’s
graduation in 1961.
Those early years involved plenty of travel for the young
couple. A 15-month stint in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania to
study the politics and economics of the newly independent
East African countries was followed a few years later by six
months in Guatemala to research the Central American Common
Market. This time, however, the couple had three little boys
in tow — the youngest just six weeks old — and Guatemala
was undergoing a period of civil unrest. “We could hear
bombs go off near the house,” says Molly Nye.
Such wide-ranging international experiences brought a larger
frame of reference to the family’s life once they’d
settled in Lexington, a perspective that fits neatly with
Nye’s ongoing, open engagement with the U.S. role in
the global community. In The Paradox of American Power:
Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone
(2002), he suggests that the United States in the 21st century
will need to rely less on military and economic might and
more on its “soft power” — the values, culture,
and institutions that can exert such a strong international
influence.
As dean, Nye has carried that viewpoint over to the Kennedy
School by increasing the number of non-American faculty and
students and adding a new degree program, the MPA in International
Development.
“Joe decided early on in his deanship that he needed
to make the school more global in its orientation while also
raising the bar on academic quality,” says Academic Dean
Stephen Walt. “He’s leaving the school in excellent
intellectual shape.”
“Somewhat more than half the current faculty were hired
during Joe’s tenure — he’s recruited people
of enormous talent and distinction from the top 10 research
universities throughout the world,” notes Frederick Schauer,
who also served as academic dean under Nye. “He has made
the Kennedy School a genuinely international institution.”
WHILE NYE’S FOCUS for the school has been global in
scope, the impetus behind his decision to accept the deanship
was located much closer to home. Disturbed by the American
public’s distrust of government, he returned to Cambridge
from Washington in 1995.
“The particular expression of that suspicion and bitterness
was the bombing in Oklahoma City,” Nye recalls. “I
felt that the Kennedy School had a good group of people in
place to think about the role of government and bring some
clarity to that discussion.” Not long after arriving,
Nye launched Visions of Governance in the 21st Century, a
project that considers the influences of technology, nonprofit
organizations, and market forces — to say nothing of
public apathy — in shaping the future of democratic governance.
“There were some important, open, intellectual questions
that had a bearing on the mission of the school,” says
Jack Donahue MPP 1982, PhD 1988, the project’s executive
director. “Joe saw that those issues required a systematic
approach in order to understand what we needed to be doing
as a professional school of government.”
“He’s shaped the school so that it’s ahead
of the curve,” says Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer in public
policy and former director of the Visions Project. “You
need to be in that position to train professionals who will
be effective in government.”
“Joe’s tenure has acknowledged that the world is
a changed place,” remarks Holly Taylor Sargent, senior
associate dean for strategy and external affairs. “His
ability to maintain a focus on critical intellectual events
and issues of the day while participating in those dialogues
and debates in the public arena has raised the school’s
profile in the world tremendously.”
Other projects undertaken by Nye include updating the school’s
IT infrastructure and making women’s initiatives a top
priority. In 1995, he conceived and assembled the Women’s
Leadership Board, an advisory panel that offers mentoring
opportunities to students at the Kennedy School and supports
faculty research in policy areas that affect women. Nye lobbied
early on for women to be considered for Rhodes scholarships,
and it seems no small coincidence that both executive deans
during his tenure — a right-hand-man sort of position
if there ever was one — have been women. Sheila Burke
MPA 1982 and Bonnie Newman both were recruited to the Kennedy
School; Burke, who left her post in 2000 to serve as undersecretary
for American Museums at the Smithsonian, calls Nye a “careful
and supportive leader.”
“This is a man of such total integrity that it is refreshing
to sit and problem solve with him,” says Newman, acknowledging
that the past several years have provided ample opportunity
for such skills. “We had a financial deficit in 2002
that required some prioritization and difficult decisions,”
she notes. “There was some unsettledness and pain involved
with that, but ultimately I think people realized that the
decisions being made were necessary and were carried out in
a thoughtful and fair manner. That was due to Joe’s leadership.”
Nye will be on leave next year and plans to read, think,
and recharge at Oxford University for a few months before
returning to the school’s faculty in fall 2005. (Most
likely the sabbatical will also offer ample opportunity to
put his chain saw to use.) Assessing his accomplishments as
dean with typical modesty, Nye will only say that he feels
the school is in a better position to carry out its mission
to train public leaders than it was eight years ago. “I’ve
always been interested in the intersection of thought and
action,” he remarks. “The nice thing about the Kennedy
School is that it’s been a place where I can combine
the two, try to shape the institution and do a certain amount
of research and writing.”
Julia Hanna is a freelance writer living in Cambridge.
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