Josef Joffe | |
|---|---|
 Joffe at theHalifax International Security Forum in 2012 | |
| Born | (1944-03-15)15 March 1944 (age 81) |
| Education | Swarthmore College (BA) Johns Hopkins University (MA) Harvard University (PhD) |
| Occupation |
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| Known for | Being publisher-editor ofDie Zeit |
Josef Joffe (born 15 March 1944) is a former publisher-editor ofDie Zeit, a weekly German newspaper. Appointed Senior Fellow of Stanford'sFreeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 2007 (a faculty position), he is also the Marc and Anita Abramowitz Fellow in International Relations at theHoover Institution and a courtesy professor ofpolitical science atStanford University. Since 1999, he has been an associate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies atHarvard University.
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Joffe was born into theJewishJoffe family[1] inLitzmannstadt,Wartheland,Nazi Germany (now Łódź,Poland) and grew up inWest Berlin, where he attended elementary school andgymnasium. He then came to the United States in 1961 as anexchange student, attending East Grand Rapids High School inGrand Rapids, Michigan. He attendedSwarthmore College, graduating in 1965, obtained a postgraduateCertificate of Advanced European Studies from theCollege of Europe in 1966 and an M.A. fromJohns Hopkins University'sSchool of Advanced International Studies. He received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1975.
In 1976, Joffe started his career withDie Zeit as a political writer and grew into managing theZeit 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 atJohns Hopkins University'sPaul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and from 1985 to 2000 he was columnist and editorial page editor forSüddeutsche Zeitung. In 1990 and 1991 he taught at Harvard University, in 1998 he was a visiting lecturer atPrinceton University'sWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and in 2002 he was a visiting lecturer atDartmouth College. He has also taught at theUniversity of Munich and theSalzburg Seminar.
In 2005, Joffe founded, together withZbigniew Brzezinski,Eliot Cohen andFrancis 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 includingCommentary,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, andThe Weekly Standard. His scholarly work has appeared in many books and in journals, includingForeign Affairs,Foreign Policy,International Security,The National Interest andThe American Interest.
Joffe has been tied to numerous pro-NATO think tanks. When "Die Anstalt", asatire 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 by the Federal Court of Justice in 2017. According to the court the information on the conflicts of interest due to undisputed membership in lobby organizations was fundamentally correct, an exaggeration of such connections on a picture was allowed due the satirical nature of the TV program.[3][2][4][5][6][7][8]
May 2022Die Zeit and Joffe reached an agreement to suspend his editorship of the newspaper. PreviouslyDer Spiegel published a research according to which Joffe warned the bankerMax Warburg in January 2017 about upcoming investigations by his own newspaper. Joffe rejected criticism from his friend Max Warburg of investigativecum-ex reporting inDie Zeit and emphasized that he had tried to “limit the damage” for the Warburg bank. “I warned you about what was in the pipeline,” said Joffe. 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]
Joffe has received aTheodor Wolff Prize for journalism in 1982[11] and theLudwig Börne Prize in 1998.[12] He received the Scopus Award in 2009.[13]
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