Josef Joffe

Josef Joffe
Joffe at the Halifax International Security Forum in 2012
Born	(1944-03-15) 15 March 1944 (age 81) Litzmannstadt
Nationality	German
Education	Swarthmore College (BA) Johns Hopkins University (MA) Harvard University (PhD)
Occupation	Publisher-editor
Known for	Being publisher-editor of Die Zeit

Josef Joffe (born 15 March 1944) is a former publisher-editor of Die Zeit , a weekly German newspaper. His second career has been in academia. Appointed Senior Fellow of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 2007 (a faculty position), he is also the Marc and Anita Abramowitz Fellow in International Relations at the Hoover Institution and a courtesy professor of political science at Stanford University. Since 1999, he has been an associate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Life

Joffe was born into the Jewish Joffe family ^[1] in Litzmannstadt, Wartheland, Nazi Germany (now Łódź, Poland) and grew up in West Berlin, where he attended elementary school and gymnasium. He then came to the United States in 1961 as an exchange student, attending East Grand Rapids High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended Swarthmore College, graduating in 1965, obtained a postgraduate Certificate of Advanced European Studies from the College of Europe in 1966 and an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1975.

In 1976, Joffe started his career with Die Zeit as a political writer and grew into managing the Zeit Dossier department, an important and often lengthy part of this newspaper which elaborates a single topic on several pages. From 1982 to 1984, he was a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and from 1985 to 2000 he was columnist and editorial page editor for Süddeutsche Zeitung . In 1990 and 1991 he taught at Harvard University, in 1998 he was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and in 2002 he was a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College. He has also taught at the University of Munich and the Salzburg Seminar.

In 2005, Joffe founded, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot Cohen and Francis Fukuyama, The American Interest , a magazine where both American and international authors think and argue about the United States and its role in the world. Joffe's essays and reviews have appeared in a wide number of publications including Commentary , The New Republic , The New York Review of Books , The New York Times Magazine , Prospect , The European Journal of International Affairs , The Times Literary Supplement , and The Weekly Standard . His scholarly work has appeared in many books and in journals, including Foreign Affairs , Foreign Policy , International Security , The National Interest and The American Interest.

Scandals

Joffe has been tied to numerous pro-NATO think tanks. When "Die Anstalt", a satire show on German TV, highlighted these ties in 2014, Joffe sued the TV station. ^[2] The lawsuit went through various courts, with differing results, but was eventually struck down in 2017 due the satirical nature of the TV programme. ^{[3] [2] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]}

Joffe was suspended of his editorship of ZEIT in May 2022. According to research by Der Spiegel, in January 2017 Joffe warned banker Max Warburg, who was a friend of his, about upcoming investigations by his own newspaper. Joffe rejected criticism from his friend Max Warburg of investigative cum-ex reporting in Die Zeit and emphasized that he had tried to “limit the damage” for Warburg. “I warned you about what was in the pipeline,” said Joffe literally. It was thanks to his “intervention” that the article “was delayed and the bank was given the opportunity to object.” Joffe also recalled that he had "begged" the banker to hire "an excellent PR agency" because of the allegations, since it involved things "that were legal at the time." ^{[9] [10] [11] [12]}

Topics and standpoints

International politics in relation with Germany's position in the world has been a preferred subject for Joffe. Joffe's 1984 article in Foreign Policy, entitled "Europe's American Pacifier," ^[13] is the source of the common international relations term of art "the American pacifier". The piece presents the argument that the preponderant power of the United States (in this case, projected into Europe) acts as a pacifying force in the region, preventing the region's multipolarity from leading to conflict.

Joffe is known for his global warming scepticism. He has described Al Gore as the "priest" of a (climate related) "secular religion". ^[14]

Honors

Joffe has received the Theodor Wolff Prize ^[15] in journalism, the Ludwig Börne Prize ^[16] in essays and literature, and the German Federal Order of Merit. He has also been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from Swarthmore College (2002) and Lewis and Clark College (2005). He received the Scopus Award in 2009. ^[17]

References

1. "Yet this Jewish son of Berlin – educated at Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard..." Review of Joffe's book Überpower by Bret Stephens in Commentary magazine Archived 3 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
2. "Einstweilige Verfügung gegen "Die Anstalt": Zeit-Journalisten wehren sich gegen ZDF-Satire | MEEDIA". 29 July 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2020.
3. Marcus Klöckner (23 May 2014). "Leitartikler und Machteliten". Telepolis. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
4. Hamburger Abendblatt - Hamburg (6 October 2014). "Einstweilige Verfügung gegen „Die Anstalt" aufgehoben" . Retrieved 18 October 2020.
5. ""Zeit"-Herausgeber Josef Joffe scheitert mit Klage gegen ZDF". Hamburger Abendblatt. 21 November 2014. Retrieved 13 December 2014.
6. "LG Hamburg, 21.11.2014 - 324 O 435/14" . Retrieved 18 October 2020.
7. LTO. "Die Anstalt verliert vor OLG Hamburg gegen Die Zeit" . Retrieved 7 October 2019.
8. "Zeit"-Journalisten scheitern mit Klage gegen ZDF-Satire, Spiegel Online vom 10. Januar 2017.
9. "Josef Joffe: „Zeit"-Mitherausgeber dankt ab", Der Spiegel , 16 May 2022, ISSN   2195-1349 , retrieved 16 May 2022
10. Volltext des Briefes bei Twitter.
11. Alan Posener (3 June 2022), "Josef Joffe kontert Kritik in Sachen Warburg: „Das ist eine Mär"", Die Welt, retrieved 5 June 2022
12. Patrick Bahners (FAZ): Joe und Max (Kommentar, faz.net 18. Mai 2022).
13. Joffe, Josef (Spring 1984). "Europe's American Pacifier". Foreign Affairs. 54 (54): 64–82. doi:10.2307/1148355. JSTOR   1148355.
14. Joffe, Josef (18 October 2007). "Ich bin Dein Gore". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 13 November 2022.
15. "Wolff-Preis für Joffe". Die Zeit (in German). 10 June 1983. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
16. "Ludwig Börne Preis". Ludwig Börne Stiftung (in German). Retrieved 22 June 2020.
17. "Preisverleihung im Kaisersaal der Residenz". Die Welt (in German). Berlin. 28 June 2009. Retrieved 22 June 2020.

Selected books

• Joffe, Josef (1987). The Limited partnership: Europe, the United States, and the burdens of alliance. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Pub. Co. ISBN   0-88730-216-5. OCLC   16130169.
• Joffe, Josef (1998). The Future of the Great Powers. London: Phoenix. ISBN   0-297-84000-2. OCLC   40131071.
• Joffe, Josef (2006). Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN   0-393-06135-3. OCLC   63703814.
• Joffe, Josef (2014). The myth of America's decline: politics, economics, and a half century of false prophecies. New York. ISBN   978-0-87140-449-7. OCLC   857863136.

External links

• Biography
• Prospect magazine Archive of articles written by Joffe.
• The New York Review of Books
• Appearances on C-SPAN