Joseph Nye is the founder, along with Robert Keohane , of the international relations theory neoliberalism developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence . Nye is currently Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University, and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard..

Nye has published many works in recent years, the most recent of which being in March 2004 and The Paradox of American Power in April 2003. Nye first coined the term soft power in the late 1980s; it first came into widespread usage following a piece written by Nye in Foreign Affairs in the early 1990s.

Nye also served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration. He is widely recognized as one of the foremost (if not the foremost) progressive thinkers on foreign policy, and is seen as the counter to renown Harvard conservative Samuel P. Huntington.