Joseph Nye is a political scientist at Harvard who is considered one of the most influential scholars on American foreign policy. He created the neoliberalism school of international relations, pioneered the concept of “soft power” and served in the Carter and Clinton administrations. Before visiting Zócalo to discuss how global power structures have changed, he answered a few questions in the Green Room.
Q. What was the last great book you read?
A. There have been lots of books that I’ve read, but the last great one is probably an anthology of Robert Frost poems that is sitting by my bed at home.
Q. How do you procrastinate?
A. Most often, it’s probably by going online if I’m near a computer. If I’m not near a computer or I’m outside, walking or looking at trees and flowers and other such things.
Q. As a child, what was your dream job?
A. I wanted to be a forest ranger. I now have a farm with a lot of trees, but I’m not quite a forest ranger.
Q. What is your biggest guilty pleasure?
A. I suppose it’s ice cream. I know there are just too many calories to make it worth it, but I love to have a little bit of ice cream every once in a while. I like Ben & Jerry’s Dublin Mudslide.
Q. What was the last song that got stuck in your head?
A. My wife tends to hum tunes or sing, and whatever she sings gets stuck in my head, so the answer would be whatever my wife was recently singing.
Q. What fictional character do you most identify with?
A. I wrote a novel once called The Power Game, and the protagonist is a person called Peter Cutler, so I suppose it’d be Peter Cutler.
Q. What would we find you doing at 10 am on a typical Saturday?
A. I would probably be at my farm in New Hampshire. Last Saturday I was out making maple syrup, but other Saturdays I would be working in the woods with a chainsaw or working in the garden or, in the summer, mowing the fields.
Q. What is your most prized material position?
A. Probably a very special three-way fly rod since I’m an avid fly fisherman.
Q. How are you different than you were 10 years ago?
A. I’m probably a little wiser but probably not quite as energetic. But fortunately I think the last 10 years have been relatively a plateau instead of a decline.
Q. What would you change about yourself?
A. I’d be nicer to my wife, I wouldn’t travel as much. These are my typical New Year’s resolutions.
To read more on Joseph’s lecture, please click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.