As he sat at home in Lexington in the late 1980s, writing a book in which he insisted historians were wrong to suggest that the United States had slipped into a period of decline, Joseph S. Nye Jr. came up with a new way of looking at how the nation exerts influence around the world.
“I invented the concept of ‘soft power’ — the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment,” he recalled in “A Life in the American Century,” his 2024 memoir.
Hard power had historically been easier to articulate and to implement, he explained in “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,” his 2004 book devoted to the subject. “We know that military and economic might often get others to change their positions,” Dr. Nye said. “Hard power can rest on inducements (‘carrots’) or threats (‘sticks’). But sometimes you can get the outcomes you want without tangible threats or payoffs.”
In contrast, soft power — such as setting up medical clinics in remote parts of the world or promoting democracy through Voice of America broadcasts — “works by persuading others to follow or getting them to agree with us on values and institutions that produce behavior we want,” he wrote in a 1999 Boston Globe opinion piece.
“Soft power can rest on the appeal of our ideas and culture or our ability to set the agenda through standards and institutions that shape the preferences of others,” he said. “It depends largely on the persuasiveness of the free information we transmit.”
Dr. Nye, who served from 1995 to 2004 as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and had held key national security positions in the Carter and Clinton administrations, died May 6 in Mount Auburn Hospital after a brief illness. He was 88 and had moved to Brookhaven at Lexington a few years ago, after living with his wife in a historic house next to the Lexington Battle Green for nearly six decades.
“Joe was a singular scholar, a visionary dean, and a committed mentor,” Jeremy Weinstein, the Kennedy School’s current dean, wrote in an email to those at the school after Dr. Nye died.
“Even in a place as steeped in history as HKS, Joe stands out as a transformational figure,” Weinstein wrote. “He helped build this institution into what it is today, while transforming the field of international relations.”
Bridging academia and high-level public service, Dr. Nye joined Harvard University’s faculty in 1964.
In the late 1970s, he joined the Carter administration in Washington, D.C., as deputy undersecretary of state for security assistance, science, and technology.
He received the Distinguished Honor Award, the State Department’s highest commendation, for his work on nuclear nonproliferation, and returned to Harvard.
In 1993, Dr. Nye returned to Washington to chair the National Intelligence Council, coordinating intelligence information from various government agencies during the Clinton administration.
He subsequently was assistant secretary for international security affairs at the Pentagon, working with others to develop what was known as the “Nye Report” or “Nye Initiative,” calling for strengthening relations between the United States and Japan as a security strategy in the region.
In 1995, he was named dean of the Kennedy School, telling the Globe that autumn that he was motivated in part to return to academia because of the bombing earlier that year of the federal building in Oklahoma City, an act of domestic terrorism that reflected growing distrust in government.
“The discussion about the role of government and what it could and couldn’t do was a confused debate, and I thought the Kennedy School would be a good forum about what government could and couldn’t do,” he said.
Dr. Nye also formerly led the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, when it was called the Center for Science and International Affairs.
Meghan O’Sullivan, the center’s current director, said for Harvard’s tribute that Dr. Nye’s “ideas transformed how we understand power, leadership, and diplomacy. His presence transformed all of us who had the privilege to know him. Few people leave such an indelible mark on both the world and the people around them.”
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. was born at home in South Orange, N.J., on Jan. 19, 1937.
His father, Joseph Sr., left high school at 15 to work as a messenger at a Wall Street firm, rose to become a bond trader, then left to launch an equities firm — all without a diploma or degree.
Dr. Nye’s mother, Else Ashwell Nye, was a college graduate and secretary when she met and married Joseph Sr.
The third of four siblings and the only boy, Dr. Nye spent much of his childhood and youth on the 100-acre farm in New Vernon his parents moved to when he was in kindergarten. His chores included spending Saturday plucking and dressing a chicken for the Sunday noon meal.
He attended what was then the all-boys Morristown Prep in Morristown, N.J., and went to Princeton University, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree. After studying at Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar, Dr. Nye went to Harvard for his doctorate in political science.
In 1961, he married Mary Harding, who was known as Molly, and whom he had known since they were teenagers.
She was a ceramics artist, ran a gallery and led an arts organization in Lexington, and volunteered at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She died in December, five months and five days before Dr. Nye.
The couple owned about 900 acres in New Hampshire and placed nearly all of it into conservation. “They were very proud of leaving a legacy of preserving that much land,” said their son Benjamin of Cambridge.
The Nyes’ initial purchase was L-shaped, defined by the paths of two fly-fishing rivers. Dr. Nye was an avid fisherman, and both he and his wife were very involved in the lives of their three sons, Benjamin said, with the Lexington house on the green becoming a magnet for the sons’ friends.
In addition to Benjamin, Dr. Nye leaves two other sons, Daniel of Moultonborough, N.H., and John of Orange, N.J.; and nine grandchildren.
A celebration of Dr. Nye’s life and work will be announced,
As Kennedy School dean, Dr. Nye created the Women and Public Policy Program and worked to expand the school’s reach and influence by inviting a greater range of faculty and students.
“I want to be the place that trains women for leadership positions around the world,” Dr. Nye told the Globe in 1998.
He also created the concept of “smart power,” a mix of hard and soft power. Hillary Clinton invoked the phrase in her 2009 confirmation hearings as secretary of state: “With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy.”
More recently, Dr. Nye saw the adept use of soft power in the way Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky garnered international support after Russia invaded.
And Dr. Nye lamented the current erosion of US soft power through cuts in foreign aid.
“It’s a big mistake on the part of the Trump administration,” he told the Globe in February. “I think it shows that Trump has an inadequate understanding of power. He sees only the coercive and transactional aspects and doesn’t have a sense of the importance of attraction.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.