In Memoriam: Walid Khalidi

Walid Khalidi speaking at the UN General Assembly, November 30, 2009.

Professor Walid Ahmad Samih Khalidi, one of the most influential historians of Palestine, passed away peacefully in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 100. His life’s work, spanning nearly a century, leaves behind a profound intellectual and institutional legacy that continues to shape the study of Palestinian history and the broader understanding of the region.

Widely recognised as the historian of the Nakba, Khalidi dedicated his scholarship to documenting the displacement of Palestinians and preserving historical memory. His early research brought global attention to “Plan Dalet,” which he identified as a strategic framework for the mass expulsion of Palestinians. Decades later, his findings would be echoed and expanded upon by other historians, affirming the depth and foresight of his work.

His major publications, including From Haven to Conquest, Before Their Diaspora, and All That Remains, remain essential contributions to historical literature. These works provided detailed, evidence-based accounts that offered a Palestinian narrative often absent from mainstream discourse. Through meticulous research and documentation, Khalidi ensured that histories at risk of being overlooked were preserved with clarity and rigor.

Beyond his role as a historian, Khalidi was also a pioneering institution-builder. He founded the Institute for Palestine Studies, which has grown into a leading centre for research and scholarship. Under his leadership, the institute became a cornerstone for academic inquiry, fostering generations of researchers and producing work that continues to influence global conversations on Palestine.

Educated at Oxford and later a professor at the American University of Beirut, Khalidi combined academic excellence with a deep engagement in political thought. His 1978 essay, “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Sovereign Palestinian State,” introduced one of the earliest articulated frameworks for a two-state solution, reflecting his ability to connect historical understanding with contemporary political realities.

His life was also marked by displacement and resilience. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which destroyed his home and personal library, Khalidi relocated to the United States. There, he continued his academic and intellectual work, including teaching at Harvard University, while remaining closely connected to the question of Palestine.

In his later years, Khalidi devoted significant effort to preserving the Khalidi Library in Jerusalem, a collection of rare manuscripts representing centuries of cultural and intellectual heritage. His commitment to safeguarding this legacy reflected a broader dedication to history, knowledge, and continuity across generations.

Those who knew him often described him as a scholar of remarkable precision and discipline, a teacher who demanded rigor, and a thinker deeply committed to truth. Even in his final years, he remained intellectually active, continuing to write and reflect on historical and contemporary developments.

Walid Khalidi’s legacy endures through his writings, the institutions he built, and the generations of scholars he influenced. His work stands as a testament to the enduring importance of historical inquiry and the responsibility of preserving memory in the face of change.

In Memoriam: Professor Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

LEADx’s Senior Advisor, and one of the truest believers in its mission, has left us.

Professor Richard H. Shultz, Jr., longtime Director of the International Security Studies Program at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, passed away suddenly. His loss is deeply felt across the academic and leadership communities he helped shape, and especially within the LEADx network, where his presence was foundational from the very beginning.

A Foundational Ally to LEADx

From the earliest conversations in 2019, when LEADx was still only an ambitious idea, Professor Shultz believed in it fundamentally. He recognized in the project something rare and necessary: a space dedicated to cultivating leaders with clarity, integrity, and courage.

He helped shape LEADx’s founding vision, traveled to Tbilisi for its inauguration, strengthened every edition that followed, and cared deeply about its growing community. Many within our network have learned directly from his teaching, wisdom, and guidance. Even when he was not physically present, he remained a quiet advocate for the mission we carry forward.

LEADx coins and yearly mementos held a proud place in his history-filled office, a reflection of how personally he regarded this work, its alumni, its faculty, and its purpose.

A Defining Figure in Security Studies

At Fletcher, Professor Shultz helped define what security studies is, not only on campus, but across the broader field. Over more than four decades, he built frameworks, institutions, and generations of practitioners who now carry his influence into governments, universities, corporations, and missions around the world.

His work shaped not only scholarship, but the lives and commitments of those who studied under him.

The Coltrane of Our Mission

LEADx often speaks in jazz when words fall short. In that spirit, Professor Shultz was our John Coltrane, disciplined, foundational, and defining.

Like Coltrane, he shaped the language of his field, carried tradition into new eras, and elevated everyone around him through mastery, rigor, and depth. He made complexity feel clear, purposeful, and alive.

Carrying the Baton Forward

Many of us hold, and will continue to uphold, the baton he placed in our hands, inspired by his enduring example of excellence, courage, and purpose.

As LEADx continues its mission to rethink leadership for a rapidly changing 21st century, we carry that baton forward with gratitude, responsibility, and resolve.

Professor Richard H. Shultz, Jr. will be remembered as a mentor, scholar, ally, and defining presence in the communities he served.

In Memoriam: Joseph S. Nye

Joseph S. Nye, distinguished political scientist, public servant, and former Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, passed away on May 6, 2024 at the age of 88. His passing was unexpected despite his age—he remained intellectually and institutionally engaged until the very end, often seen walking to campus and attending faculty meetings at HKS.

Nye’s contributions to political thought, public policy, and international relations were profound. He is best known for coining the term “soft power”—a concept that transformed how global influence is understood. In Nye’s words, soft power is “the ability to affect others without coercion or payment, by means of attraction.” This idea not only became central to academic discourse but shaped U.S. foreign policy debates for decades.

Yet Nye's legacy extends beyond the vocabulary of power. He was also a builder of institutions that gave human rights a formal place in policy discourse. In 1999, during Harvard Kennedy School’s commencement, Dean Nye announced the establishment of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, founded in collaboration with HKS alumnus Greg Carr and under the early leadership of Samantha Power and Michael Ignatieff. Just one month before Nye’s passing, the center was renamed the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, reflecting its continued growth and impact.

Nye believed deeply in the centrality of human rights to American soft power. He often argued that the moral dimensions of U.S. foreign policy—when sincere—enhanced national credibility and global influence. “America’s reputation for protecting human rights, for standing up for individual liberties and freedoms is a great source of soft power and attraction in the rest of the world,” he once wrote. He viewed values not as counter to national interest but as part of it, arguing that moral leadership and enlightened self-interest must co-exist in foreign policy.

His academic career was equally distinguished. Alongside Robert Keohane, he co-authored Power and Interdependence, a foundational text in international relations theory. His later work, including Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (2020), applied a three-dimensional ethical lens—intentions, means, and consequences—to evaluating presidential leadership in foreign affairs.

Nye also served in public office, notably as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under President Bill Clinton. His time in government reinforced his conviction that foreign policy must balance hard and soft power—a philosophy he termed “smart power.”

His impact on generations of scholars, policymakers, and human rights advocates was deeply personal. As one HKS faculty member recalled: “When I received tenure, Joe emailed to say it was one of the best things he’d ever done—hiring me. That moment made me feel I belonged at Harvard. Joe embodied the virtues of this institution.”

Joseph Nye’s work and example continue to shape how we think about leadership, morality, and America’s place in the world. His passing is a profound loss to the global community, but his vision endures—in the institutions he built, the students he mentored, and the ideas that continue to guide our search for a more just and interdependent world.

Wonderful mentor and advisor.

He and Robert Keohane wrote unsolicited letters in support of me in 1985 after students whom I taught as their professor for their PS mandatory capstone senior seminar on Theory and Practice in IR petitioned to have me fired because the curriculum I created was ‘too hard.’

The department made a precedent-setting decision that the requirements were worth more than the regular amount of credit, and we moved forward :)

In Memoriam: Michael Hawley

Michael, his son Tycho, my former student and NPR reporter Tovia Smith, and my wife Iris Adler

I had the great privilege of befriending Michael Hawley. I was but one of thousands. A remarkably prodigious polymath, he is a person who for me defines the phrase sui generis. I greatly admired the thinking he epitomized in extolling the virtue and necessity of Renaissance education.

The four years of an undergradu­ate ­education (for the minority of the population that gets that far) have become less of an exploration and more of a routine. Even the path to college has become a pipeline of preparatory crash courses, tests, in­terviews, and campus visits. Graduate schools are even more constricting. In an age that is fomenting the greatest expansion of knowledge – and of its means of ­distribution – in history, our educational system is churning out ever more narrowly focused scholars. One wonders if, along with biodiversity and cultural diversity, the diversity of the individual mind might be another casualty of modern life.

I was honored when he agreed to be a mentor for Convisero. His dedication to his students was extraordinary, and he will be greatly missed. This virtual Festschrift speaks to his special warmth and humanity.

His adventurous, unprecedented eclectic accomplishments are legendary. I nominated Mike for the 2020 Tällberg Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. Here is what I had written then:

I am nominating Dr. Michael Hawley, brilliant distinctive icon of interdisciplinary thinking, and a champion of the critical need for eclecticism and versatility in education, especially necessary in the digital information age. 

At the MIT Media Lab, where he has taught and innovated, and globally, through Fellowships, lectures, writing, and by example, Mike has inspired generations of flourishing cutting-edge thinkers, research professors, friends, and especially his students. He encourage all think boldly about their own educational and vocational pursuits, to dare to create, and to explore the intersections and hybridizations of their interests in innovative and exciting ways.

He lives and encourages others to live in a manner that is open to ideas, deeply intellectually curious, exploratory, experimental, daring, oblivious to failure, but grounded in rigorous preparation, practice and expertise.  He is a perpetual student and thinker and tinkerer. 
Disinterested in traditional incentives, academic "tracks" and standard rewards, he has courageously followed unusual paths, from the foothills of Himalayas to concert halls, from luge runs to Lucas Labs, to pursue his passions for art, music, photography, computer science, engineering, ecology, artificial intelligence, sport, and so much more. 

I have been a teacher and global educator for fifty-five years. As a youth I was inspired by the biography of Benvenuto Cellini. The concept of a "Renaissance Man" never left me. Rarely has an individual approached this, and beyond, and continues to inspire more than Mike. Here is a true modern-day renaissance man. For the founders of the Media Lab - once branded the educational lab "inventing the future" - he is their avatar. From advances in digital publishing for LucasFilm to performance technology for the American Everest efforts he has produced extraordinary tangible results.  

I knew of him since 1995 when I organized my Institute's tenth anniversary, and many Media Lab folks, including Mike's mentor Marvin Minsky, were engaged. Years later I read his inspirational seminal lament “Whither the Renaissance Man.” And now I have had the privilege of his personal friendship for the past few years.

What an Eliasson recipient he would make! 

In Memoriam: Ambassador Jonathan Moore

I first met Ambassador Jonathan Moore in 1980 during his tenure as the director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. I was teaching two study groups there, on covert action and U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. MENA foreign affairs. Jonathan was formerly the US coordinator for refugees and Ambassador to the United Nations responsible for economic and social issues.

He was in so many ways my mentor, and responsible for my Institute's ability to conduct our global experiential immersive education programs, knowledgeably, safely, and responsibly.

I invited Jonathan to join the Institute’s Advisory Board, on which he served for ten years.

He wrote this of the Institute:

It is easy for me to assess the EPIIC program at Tufts from an academic viewpoint and that of a competitor…And I do so with admiration and event envy. There are three characteristics of EPIIC which I would like to mention specifically. The first is the kind of research which is at the same time rigorous and relevant, analytically sound by requiring a political and cultural respect and a practical value. The second is the full-scope and full-bore engagement which this program invites of its participants, which apparently becomes irresistible, given their enthusiastic immersion, thirsty to apply the knowledge they are acquiring in their very high-quality, formal education to challenges of a human scale. The third is the confidence which the program instills in idealistic and spiritual commitment, the understanding that the joining of ideals with intellect and competence is to be pursued rather than shunned.

He inspired and mentored generations of our students and especially stimulated the creation of our Voices from the Field program.

The last program I initiated for the Institute before I became Emeritus in 2016 is an annual lecture on “Global Moral Leadership” to be given in his honor. Finally on December 4th, 2020, a mutual friend, Ambassador Samantha Power delivered the Institute's inaugural lecture in memory of our extraordinary mutual friend. I first asked her to give this talk when we were ushers at Jonathan's Harvard memorial service in June of 2017, and she asked me to wait until she finished her book, The Education of An Idealist. It was worth the wait. The lecture was a wonderful inspirational moment, joining former UN Ambassadors, whose ethics and idealism permeated everything we accomplished at the Institute.

Jonathan and his wonderful wife Katie are greatly missed.