Grand Speaker Series: Dr. Josef Joffe, Editor of DIE ZEIT

Topic: “Obama & Merkel: Last Man (and Woman) Standing in the West” 

Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. Previously he was columnist/editorial page editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung (1985-2000).

Abroad, his essays and reviews have appeared in: New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Prospect (London), Commentaire (Paris). Regular contributor to the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post; Time and Newsweek.

His second career has been in academia. In 2007, he was appointed Senior Fellow of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (a professorial position), with which he has been affiliated since 1999. A visiting professor of political science at Stanford since 2004, he is also a fellow of the University's Hoover Institution. He has also taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Munich. Visiting lecturer at Princeton and Dartmouth. In 2005, he co-founded the foreign policy journal "The American Interest" in Washington (with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Francis Fukuyama).

His most recent book is Überpower: America's Imperial Temptation (2006, translated into German and French). His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, International Security, The American Interest and Foreign Policy as well as in professional journals in Germany, Britain and France. He is the author of The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance, The Future of International Politics: The Great Powers; co-author of Eroding Empire: Western Relations With Eastern Europe.

Boards: American Academy in Berlin, International University Bremen, Ben Gurion University, Israel; Goldman Sachs Foundation, New York, Aspen Institute Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; German Children And Youth Foundation, Berlin; European Advisory Board, Hypovereinsbank, Munich (2001-2005). Editorial Boards: The American Interest, (Washington); International Security (Harvard), and Prospect (London), The National Interest (Washington, 1995-2000). Trustee: Atlantik-Brücke (Berlin), Deutsches Museum (Munich), Abraham Geiger College (Berlin). Member: American Council on Germany, Intl. Institute for Strategic Studies. Honors: Honorary Degree in Humane Letters, Swarthmore College (2002), Lewis and Clark College, 2005; Theodor Wolff Prize (Journalism) and Ludwig Börne Prize (Essays/Literature), Germany; Federal Order of Merit, Germany.

Education: Ph.D. in Government, Harvard; M.A., Johns Hopkins; B.A., Swarthmore College.