11 Soft Power and Higher Education SOFT POWER IS THE ABILITY to get what you want through attraction rather than through coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and foreign and domestic policies. When the United States’ policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced. Joseph Nye, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Universi- ty from 1995 to 2004, coined the term “soft power.” He describes how soft power differs from hard military strength and economic power, and why it is becoming more important than in the past—largely due to globalization and the communica- tions revolution. Nye suggests how higher education leaders might enhance Ameri- can soft power by helping to build a better understanding of the nature of power and increasing international student and cultural exchange programs. Soft Power Power comes in many guises. Although we may believe that the United States is the only superpower in a unipolar world, in reality the distri- bution of power resources in the contemporary information age varies greatly across different issues. Power always depends on its context— requiring a far more complex analysis than first meets the eye. World politics has become like a three-dimensional chess game in which one can win only by playing vertically as well as horizontally. On the top Joseph Nye Harvard University