Josef Joffe
Senior Fellow
Biography
Josef Joffe is Professor of Practice/International Affairs with a long history at Johns Hopkins, where he earned his M.A. and later taught nuclear strategy in the mid-1980s. He was also educated at Swarthmore (B.A.), the College of Europe and Harvard (Ph.D. in Government).
His career has been divided between journalism and academia, Europe and the United States. He has taught at SAIS, Harvard, Stanford and Munich University. He was twice Regent Fellow at the University of California and a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton and Darthmouth. He has held research positions at the Woodrow Wilson Center,the Carnegie Endowment for International and the Institute for International Studies at Stanford. Peace. Guest lectures from Amherst to Z urich University. Distinguished Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution since 2004.
In Germany, he has served as editorial-page editor at Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) and editor of the weekly Die Zeit (Hamburg). Columns, essays and book reviews in: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Times, Financial Times, Time, Newsweek, New Republic, Politico, Atlantic, New York Review of Books, Commentary.
Scholarly contributions in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, The American Interest, which he co-founded with SAIS scholars Eliot Cohen and Frank Fukuyama. In 2020, he co-founded the successor magazine American Purpose.
Publications
Recent Books
Überpower: The imperial Temptation of America, The Myth of American Decline (both W.W. Norton). Der gute Deutsche: Die Karriere einer moralischen Supermacht (The Good Germans: Career of a Moral Superpower).
Boards
American Academy in Berlin, Israel Democracy Institute, Ben Gurion University, Bard College Berlin, Munich Public Policy School, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, Hamburg Symphony, Youth for Understanding. Editorial Boards: International Security, Internationale Politik (Berlin), The National Interest (1995-2005), The American Interest (2005-20). Honors: Honorary Degree in Humane Letters, Swarthmore College (2002), Lewis and Clark College, 2005; Federal Order of Merit, Germany, 1996.