Paul Doty: A Remembrance

On December 20, 2011, Paul Doty, the founder of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and this journal, passed away. Paul was a man of immense accomplishment: a world-class figure in both science and public policy, a builder of institutions, an intellectual leader, a stalwart at Harvard for more than sixty years. He had major accomplishments in biochemistry and molecular biology. He was a leading expert on nuclear arms control. He founded Harvard's Biochemistry Department and created the leading journal in the field. He built teams of colleagues that were second to none. His former students and fellows represent a legacy that would make any scholar proud.

These impressive facts, however, do not fully capture the measure of the man. It is easy enough to recite Paul's accomplishments but much harder to effectively communicate the human qualities that made him special. Despite his stature, he was unassuming, almost self-effacing, and approachable. He was legendary for his partial embodiment of the absent-minded professor (giving rise to innumerable Doty stories that now constitute an oral tradition among his many friends and protégés), but there was no doubting his incisive, penetrating intelligence and his unerring ability to get to the heart of the matter. In a low-key, civilized way, he was full of intellectual integrity: no pandering, no backing down, no retreat from his beliefs in the face of high-powered opposition. Easy to underestimate, he was exceptionally effective at navigating the political and bureaucratic thickets at Harvard and in the wider world; in the end, it was Doty, more than most, who got things done. Though at ease among the high and mighty, in whose circle he regularly traveled, he was particularly devoted to the unknown and unproven. Indeed, in the institutions he created, he surrounded himself with young people—incipient scholars whom he cared about, watched over, nurtured, and helped. People, he often said, were the principal purpose and product of the Center—and he took warranted pride in the long list of distinguished alumni that accumulated over the years. Paul had a deserved reputation as a particularly good judge of talent, but his ability to calibrate was in part the result of his deep engagement with the young scholars in his charge; he could judge them well because he knew them well.

Paul was a man of substance. He cared deeply about the issues on which he worked and was unflagging in his efforts to make a difference. He made dozens of trips to Moscow (invariably burdening his traveling companions with his excess baggage) and countless trips to Washington, D.C., seeking to promote dialogue between the Soviet Union and the United States even in the darkest days of the Cold War, and helping to construct an arms control edifice that might help reduce the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. His main aim in creating the Belfer Center was to train successor generations to carry on this essential work. His sense of purpose suffused the Center and enveloped those he sought to train: here was work that mattered; here was a cause worth devoting a life to.

It was my enormous good fortune to fall into Paul Doty's orbit several decades ago, when I was awarded a predoctoral fellowship at the Center. I was a doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy: young, unknown, unaccomplished, unpublished, struggling with a recalcitrant dissertation and, in my own eyes, certainly unworthy of a precious post at Harvard. I soon found myself completely integrated into an amazingly rich and stimulating community: working with intimidatingly impressive colleagues, interacting with famous Harvard professors, teaching Harvard undergraduates as a teaching fellow, attending dinner seminars with major academic and policy figures—it was well beyond anything that I could have imagined. I was quite likely the most junior person in the Center, not long past my Ph.D. general exams (by today's standards I would not even have been eligible to apply). But it did not matter; all were treated with respect and judged by their performance.

For me, that predoctoral fellowship turned...