‘Henry’s inner circle’: At Yale, Kissinger sought out a next generation of strategists
Kissinger, who died at 100 on Wednesday, became a regular guest at seminars in the Grand Strategy program in the early 2000s and forged a strong relationship with the University throughout his later years.
In 1996 — in an unpublicized, covert appearance at Yale’s Berkeley College — Henry Kissinger met with a group of 40 undergraduate students to discuss and field questions on U.S. foreign policy. That talk marked Kissinger’s first documented visit to Yale’s campus. Nearly 30 years later, Kissinger leaves behind a complicated and influential legacy at the University — and the world at large.
Kissinger, a highly controversial statesman who shaped decades of U.S. foreign policy, died on Nov. 29 at 100 years old.
As secretary of state and national security advisor in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger facilitated some of the most significant policy initiatives of the 20th century, including the reopening of U.S.-China relations, negotiating an end to the Vietnam War and easing of U.S.-Soviet tension. But Kissinger’s “Realpolitik” approach to diplomacy yielded dastardly impacts. His deadly bombing campaigns in Cambodia, support for authoritarian regimes in Latin America and greenlighting of Indonesia’s bloodshed in East Timor are among the policies that led to many thousands of civilian deaths — leading many to remember him as a war criminal.
Kissinger, who studied and taught at Harvard early on in his career, developed a close relationship with Yale after his tenure in government came to a close.
“Henry became deeply invested in what he thought would be the source of the next generation of foreign policy.”
—Professor of history, Paul Kennedy
Kissinger often made visits to Yale’s campus in the late 1990s and early 2000s and became a frequent guest at seminars in the Grand Strategy program, which was founded in 2000 by Kennedy, John Lewis Gaddis and Charles Hill. The program, designed to develop students’ capacity for strategic thinking, featured several of Kissinger’s readings on the syllabus and scheduled visits to meet with Kissinger at the Yale Club in New York.
In 2011, Kissinger donated his collection of approximately one million personal papers to Yale. The Kissinger Papers remain accessible to the public through the University’s digital collection.
“Kissinger’s gift of his papers to Yale is a priceless legacy,” Richard Levin, who served as Yale’s president from 1993 to 2013 wrote to the News. “For historians of diplomacy and specialists in international relations, its value is beyond measure.”
Kissinger and President Richard C. Levin (Yale News)
The collection was the basis for establishing the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy at Yale’s Jackson Institute, which, according to its website, “encourages research and teaching on United States foreign policy by drawing on the Kissinger papers as well as other important Yale library collections in this field.”
The center brings figures in global affairs to campus as Kissinger Senior Fellows and hosts Kissinger Visiting Scholars who research and write about the history of American diplomacy.
Additionally, the Johnson Center hosted Kissinger at Yale for an annual conference, which convened renowned academics and practitioners to discuss critical issues in international affairs.
“The idea was to try and maintain his connection to the campus and keep him in touch with students,” Ted Wittenstein ’04, the director of the Johnson Center, said.
Kissinger and Yale made national headlines in September of 2021, when Beverly Gage, a professor of history and American Studies as well as the then-director of the Grand Strategy program, resigned. Gage cited donor pressure to influence the curriculum and create an advisory board — including Kissinger.
Nicholas F. Brady, one of the program’s donors, complained to the Yale administration that under Gage, the program was not “what it was” and not taught “the way Henry Kissinger would,” the New York Times reported.
Through conversations with Kissinger’s former coworkers, friends and students, as well as Yale faculty members and alumni, the News traced the origins of Kissinger’s relationship with the University and the legacy he leaves behind at Yale.
Arrival at Yale
The story of Kissinger and Yale begins with Charles Hill.
Left to right: Hill, Kennedy and Kissinger (Yale News)
Hill, who passed away in 2021, joined the foreign service in 1961 and served as a speechwriter and senior advisor to Kissinger starting in 1974. Hill quit the foreign service in 1989 and began teaching at Yale in 1992. But even then, Hill maintained a close relationship with Kissinger, who continued relying on Hill to write all his memos. Kissinger and Hill spoke to him on the phone once or twice a week, according to Paul Kennedy — whose office was next door to Hill’s.
“I remember Henry and Charlie ‘activating’ each other incessantly,” Norma Thompson, a Yale professor and Hill’s wife, wrote. “There was always a new foreign policy project, another intractable political problem that needed addressing.”
Beyond Hill, Kissinger had always admired certain professors in Yale’s history department — namely Donald Kagan, a renowned historian of Ancient Greece, and Jonathan Spence, who specialized in Chinese history. Through Hill, Kissinger became closer to Yale and to many professors at the University.
“At this stage of his life, Henry was interested in having a network of intellectuals,” Kennedy said, recounting dinner parties that Kissinger liked to host at his homes in Manhattan and in Kent, Connecticut.
“He liked to think that he could spot the rising stars in fields like politics and diplomacy and bring them into ‘Henry’s inner circle.’”
—Paul Kennedy
During Kissinger’s second visit to Yale, he specifically asked to speak with Spence, and Kennedy recalled seeing the two huddled together in the living room of Berkeley College’s Swensen House as Kissinger peppered him with questions about the state of U.S.-China relations.
Kissinger began to grow comfortable with Yale at a time when his relationship with Harvard, his alma mater, was growing tense. Kissinger was a Harvard professor until President Richard Nixon tapped him in 1968 to serve as national security advisor. On leave from campus, Kissinger began to feel isolated from former colleagues who criticized his policies on the Vietnam War, Graham Allison — who was the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School from 1977 to 1989 — told the News.
When a group of his closest colleagues — Thomas Schelling, Stanley Hoffman, Richard Neustadt and Ernest May — traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1969 to march in an anti-war protest, Kissinger became deeply upset. As the war continued, “estrangement morphed into divorce,” Allison said.
Per Allison, Kissinger felt that he should have been offered a professorship at Harvard after ending his service as secretary of state in 1977. But “given views on campus,” Allison said, “that was not a real option.”
“Henry loved Harvard,” Allison wrote to the News. “Given what he saw as rejection by the University that had been formative in his life and career, he accepted – and appreciated – when Hill, Paul, Gaddis and others offered a welcoming alternative.”
—Graham Allison
That alternative? Yale.
Jeremi Suri GRD ’01, a professor of global affairs at the University of Texas, added that Kissinger felt welcomed at Yale — but not necessarily because the University professors shared his views.
Suri, who studied under Gaddis and Kennedy while earning his doctorate in history, noted that Kennedy — whom he regards as a more left-leaning historian — “has a very different perspective from Kissinger.”
“This is very much a story about Kissinger becoming comfortable with people but not because they agreed with him necessarily,” he said. “Kissinger felt they at least respected his work in a way that Harvard never did.”
Suri is also the author of “Henry Kissinger and the American Century,” a 2007 book detailing Kissinger’s career and policy directives.
Kissinger’s first interaction with Grand Strategy students came in the fall of 2003, when 30 of the program’s students took the train to New York City to meet with Kissinger at the Yale Club. Hesitant about appearing on campus, Kissinger did not make his first appearance at a Grand Strategy seminar until 2005.
Among students at Yale, Kissinger found less pushback than he originally feared. Kennedy recalled hearing that the last time Kissinger visited Harvard’s campus, someone had thrown an egg at him. Kennedy admitted, though, that the story may well be “urban legend.”
In addition to scheduled meetings with students in the Grand Strategy program, events with Kissinger outside of the classroom became routine as well. Every so often, Kissinger’s limo would drop him off outside Berkeley College for private dinners with Yale undergraduates.
Kissinger as a senior at Harvard University (Wikimedia Commons)
Kissinger grew to love these dinners and began to expect an invitation, according to Kennedy. If Kissinger felt he was snubbed, he would complain.
Ted Wittenstein ’04 LAW ’12, who was a student in the Grand Strategy program, recalled being impressed by Kissinger’s willingness to engage with students, especially at the age of 80.
“I was struck by his intellectual curiosity, his eagerness to question his students about their research,” he said. “I also think he enjoyed engaging with people in the program who held different views.”
He noted that certain students did not see “eye to eye” with Kissinger but valued the opportunity to speak with him nonetheless. Kennedy recalled emphasizing to students the importance of studying opposing viewpoints.
“It’s fine if you want to speak and learn from Henry, but when you’re writing your research paper for my class, make sure you’re not just drawing from his books,” he said.
Kennedy also described the relationship between Kissinger and undergraduate students as “a sort of mutual flattery.”
“I think that in later years, Henry was yearning for respect after taking years of criticism,” Kennedy said, noting that he came to view Kissinger as a “lonely” figure due to widespread criticism of his policies and views.
Gaddis described Kissinger as someone who was “eager to help Yale professors and to meet — even to hire — Yale students.” Kissinger hired several students from the Grand Strategy program to work for him in advisory positions at some of his late-in-life business endeavors, Gaddis said.
The Kissinger collection
Kissinger’s devotion to the University extended beyond his interactions with his students. In 2011, Kissinger chose to donate much of his extensive archive of papers to the University — in part, Gaddis said, because Hill suggested it.
“Yale is honored to be chosen as the home for the papers of Dr. Kissinger, who has been among the major figures of the past century in shaping U.S. foreign policy,” Levin said in a press release announcing the donation.
Parts II and III of Kissinger’s personal collection are available at the Yale University Library, with Part I housed in the Library of Congress. In 2015, Yale digitized the entire collection, allowing online public access to descriptions and digital reproductions of the materials. Part II documents Kissinger’s pre-government, government and post-government careers during the 20th century, while Part III primarily covers Kissinger’s post-government career after 2000.
No other archival collection about U.S. foreign policy has been digitized and made publicly available to the extent that Kissinger’s papers have, said Yale library archivist Joshua Cochran. Cochran curates the American History and Diplomacy collections at Yale.
(Yale Daily News)
Over the years, Cochran has observed the papers generate interest from undergraduates, faculty and graduate students alike.
“Having the papers at Yale and seeing the interest they generate, I think will keep those conversations and ideas about the legacy and future of U.S. foreign policy going for the foreseeable future,” he wrote to the News.
One section of Part III is restricted to the public until 25 years after Kissinger’s death. In 2048, that section will become open to research.
Kennedy suggested that Yale’s willingness to restrict certain parts of the collection may have been a “hook” to persuade Kissinger to donate his collection to Yale over other interested institutions, including the Library of Congress and the Hoover Institution, where he was a fellow.
He speculated that this part of the collection may involve insight into Kissinger’s communications with Saudi Arabia, which Kissinger may have felt were not ready to be viewed publicly.
Cochran called the restrictions “standard archival practice,” writing that it is common for archives to “discuss and potentially allow for some access restrictions to the papers for a period of time.”
Gaddis emphasized that Yale’s purpose in publicizing Kissinger’s collection is to enable students to formulate their own interpretations of his career.
“The purpose of archives is not to promote any single legacy, but to make it possible for future scholars to reach their own conclusions,” he wrote. “Yale’s role has been to make Kissinger’s papers accessible, and that it’s now doing for projects ranging from major books to undergraduate essays.”
Legacy at Yale
Kissinger’s continued relationship with Yale, particularly in the latter half of the 21st century, did not come without controversy.
(Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs)
His annual conferences were staffed by tight security, and in at least one year, protesters interrupted him to criticize his record on human rights.
During the Vietnam War, Kissinger and then-President Richard Nixon ordered clandestine bombing raids on neutral Cambodia in an effort to flush out Viet Cong forces in the east of the country. In 1975, Kissinger gave Indonesian President Suharto the go-ahead for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor — a mission that left at least 200,000 dead. In Chile, after the U.S. ousted elected president Salvador Allende, Kissinger provided support for the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a brutal dictator who oversaw the murder of 3,065 people in the name of fighting Communism.
Ahead of Kissinger’s third annual conference in 2014, only select students at the Jackson School of Global Affairs received notification. Those students were told by email to keep word of the event a secret.
“Dr. Kissinger’s visit to campus will not be publicized, so we appreciate your confidentiality with respect to this exciting opportunity,” Larisa Satara, the then-associate director of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, wrote in the email, which was forwarded to Salon.
Some students, alumni and faculty pushed back against Kissinger’s presence on campus and influence on the Grand Strategy program.
“No one has worked longer and harder to help Kissinger justify and polish his controversial legacy than John Gaddis at Yale,” James Sleeper, a then-Yale professor of political science, wrote in a 2011 article criticizing the Grand Strategy program.
Sleeper did not respond to an interview request from the News.
Laura Wexler, an American Studies professor at Yale, wrote that Kissinger’s connection to Yale means that the institution is “stitched much more firmly into the daisy chain of U.S. imperialism.”
“I hope that the Kissinger papers that are now here will allow scholars in the future to document more exactly what that has meant, for us in New Haven, for the country, and for those millions of people around the world directly impacted by the violence and terrible arrogance of his realpolitik,”
—Laura Wexler
Roughly two months before Kissinger’s death, Daud Shad ’21 co-penned an opinion column lambasting Yale’s ties to the late secretary of state.
In that column, Shad claimed that the University’s “celebration” of Kissinger goes against Yale President Peter Salovey’s recent claim that Yale “stand[s] for peace.”
“Such a claim is utterly absurd when the university celebrates some of the worst warmongers in recent history, such as Kissinger,” he wrote.
Shad cited the Kissinger Senior Fellows program and quotes from former and current Yale presidents Levin and Salovey, in which they respectively said Yale was “fortunate” and “privileged” to host Kissinger. Shad also noted the donor pressure that Beverly Gage and the Grand Strategy program experienced in 2021.
Salovey did not respond to the News’ requests for comment. Levin, however, wrote in affirmation of Kissinger’s extensive experience in foreign policy.
“Dr. Kissinger’s “realist” approach to foreign policy may not have appealed to everyone,” Levin wrote to the News in response. “But no one else engaged in international affairs over the past six decades combined such a deep knowledge of history with such a penetrating awareness of current affairs.”
Stanley Heller ’69, who majored in history while at Yale, called on the University to distance itself from Kissinger. Heller is also the executive director of Connecticut’s Middle East Crisis Committee.
“We’ve learned more and more about Kissinger’s crimes as the years have gone by (Cambodia, East Timor, Chile, etc.),” he wrote. “Yale should repudiate his influence on strategic thinking and in particular rename or renounce the Kissinger Fellowship.”
Jeremi Suri — who authored “Henry Kissinger and the American Century” — also weighed in on the controversy over Kissinger’s frequent presence on Yale’s campus.
To Suri, that presence would only be a problem if “Kissinger were being brought in and people on the other side were not.”
“One could make the argument that he’s a war criminal,” Suri said. “But I think the scale of his behavior is not outside the norm for American policymakers. His behavior, his actions, the policies he supported are not out of whack with American foreign policy. If you’re not going to bring Kissinger you’re not going to bring people like Condi Rice or Obama,” referring to the drone strikes authorized by the Obama administration.
Suri added that Kissinger might have gravitated toward the students in the Grand Strategy program because he felt it attracted students who “would be more open-minded.”
“This was not a program that was filled with conservatives,” he said. “It was a program where people were self-selecting and cared about foreign policy and respected foreign policymakers.”
Arne Westad, the current director of the Grand Strategy program, said that the program “has no affiliations with any particular form of strategic thinking.”
None of Kissinger’s readings appeared on the program’s fall 2023 syllabus.
“His policy towards the Soviet Union and China was largely successful and made not just the United States but the world a safer place,” Westad said of Kissinger. “He also spearheaded negotiations on nuclear weapons limitations that contributed massively to the peaceful ending of the Cold War.”
But, Westad continued, “his role in the overthrow of democracy in Chile and secret bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia mar his international reputation. Overall, though, Kissinger stands a head above today’s foreign policymakers in his breadth of vision and his understanding of history.”
Following Kissinger’s death on Wednesday, Rolling Stone published an article with the headline “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies.” Other media outlets published articles with similar headlines.
The former U.S. diplomat has never been tried for war crimes.
(Wikimedia Commons)
In 1973, Kissinger recieved the Nobel Peace Prize for his work negotiating the ceasefires of the Paris Peace Accords on “Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam.” The prize commitee faced criticism earlier this year, however, for bestowing the award unto Kissinger despite documents revealing that he and other involved officials were aware that the accords would likely fail to end the war. Violent conflict continued through 1975.
Carla Hill ’58 LAW, who chairs the board that oversees the Kissinger collection, and who served alongside Kissinger in the Ford administration as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said that media criticism of Kissinger makes the opportunity provided by the archives at Yale more interesting.
“Students have the opportunity to see the circumstances Henry was working in first hand,” she said. “See how he dealt with issues in Vietnam or Indonesia and decide for yourself if you agree or disagree.”
American Studies professor Wexler said that Kissinger is not the only “unsavory figure” whose legacy has been “lifted up by Yale” in the past, pointing out that John Calhoun, a former U.S. vice president and defender of American slavery, had a residential college named after him until Yale changed the name in 2017.
“As it did with Calhoun, I personally hope that the fact that we are maintaining Kissinger’s presence at Yale will also make possible robust debate that puts forward other ideas about to whom and to what we owe our freedoms,” she wrote. “It is the least that we can do.”
(Yale News)
A public memorial service for Kissinger will be held in New York City. The date of the service has not yet been confirmed.
Correction, Dec. 4: This article has been updated to correct a typo and specify an attribution on a quote.
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