(BGF) – Governor Michael Dukakis, Chairman of the Boston Global Forum, recorded an introduction to this afternoon’s installment of the Distinguished Lecture Series featuring Joseph Nye. Currently, Gov. Dukakis is located in Los Angeles, where he serves as a visiting professor of public policy at UCLA during the winter months. Given that Gov. Dukakis is located in Los Angeles we experienced some technical difficulties while recording his introduction. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. Below, we have included the video, as well as the transcription, of Gov. Dukakis’ introduction. Additionally, the live stream of Joseph Nye’s Distinguished Lecture can be found here. Thank you very much for your continued support.
Governor Dukakis: Hi everybody and thank you for attending the latest in a series of the Boston Global Forum Distinguished Lectures, which we hope will continue and be very much a part of the Boston Global Forum for a long time to come. Today’s Distinguished Lecture is designed to introduce the Forum’s yearly topic for 2014, and an important topic it is: the relationship between and among the United States, Japan, and China. Throughout the year we will be calling on scholars, leading experts, and practitioners to participate and engage with us on this very important topic. Additionally, in the coming months the Boston Global Forum will host three conferences on U.S., Chinese, and Japanese relations: the first will be on April 24th, the second on September 17th, and the third will be on November 5th, 2014. We are excited about the conferences and hope that they will further the debate on the issues facing, and opportunities present in, the relationship between the United States, China, and Japan. These conferences will also feature a number of extraordinary contributors including today’s guest speaker, Professor Joseph Nye.
I’ve known Joe Nye ever since we talked together and worked together at the Kennedy School at Harvard. He is a University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he previously served as Dean. He is also a member of our Global Forum’s Board of Thinkers. It’s abundantly clear that there are few scholars with as renown and influential a career as Dr. Nye. In fact, a recent poll on international relations marked him as the most influential scholar on U.S. foreign policy. He has done many, many things, not just in academia but in the real world of policy making. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and ultimately earned his Ph.d. in Political Science from Harvard. Throughout his distinguished career he has served in many high-level positions including as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and a Deputy Under Secretary of State. So, in Joe we have a very, very special person and somebody for whom I have enormous respect. He is also an author and a researcher and may be the person who coined the phrase “soft power”, The Power Game, and many other publications. He’s really one of the most thoughtful people in international relations today and he, together with me, will be leading discussion throughout the year on this very important topic. It is my great honor to introduce you to, a distinguished scholar, a great thinker, and a friend: Professor Joseph Nye.