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Henry Kissinger, First Jewish US Secretary of State Who Shaped Cold War Diplomacy, Dies Aged 100
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrives for a memorial service for late Social Democratic senior politician Egon Bahr at St. Mary’s Church in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 17, 2015. Photo: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Henry Kissinger, the dominant US diplomat of the Cold War era who helped Washington open up to China, forge arms control deals with the Soviet Union, and end the Vietnam War but who was reviled by critics over human rights, has died at the age of 100.
Kissinger, a German-born Jewish refugee whose career took him from academia to diplomacy and who remained an active voice in foreign policy into his later years, died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday, his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc., said.
Kissinger was at the height of his powers during the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War when he served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President Richard Nixon.
After Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, he remained a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford.
He was the architect of the US diplomatic opening with China, landmark US-Soviet arms control talks, expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam.
While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and statesmanship, others branded him a war criminal for his support for anti-communist dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In his latter years, his travels were circumscribed by efforts by some nations to arrest or question him about past US foreign policy.
He won the 1973 Peace Prize for ending US involvement in the Vietnam War but it was one of the most controversial ever. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose about the secret US bombing of Cambodia. North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, selected to share the award, declined it.
As tributes poured in from around the world, Beijing called him a “good old friend of the Chinese people” who made historic contributions to normalizing relations between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Kissinger as a “wise and farsighted statesman” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his meetings with Kissinger provided “a masterclass in statesmanship.”
With his distinctive German-accented voice, Kissinger was never shy to offer his opinion. Ford called him a “super secretary of state” but also noted his prickliness and self-assurance, saying “Henry in his mind never made a mistake.”
“He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew,” Ford told an interviewer shortly before his death in 2006.
HARVARD FACULTY
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, and moved to the United States with his family in 1938 before the Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jewry.
Anglicizing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized US citizen in 1943, served in the Army in Europe in World War Two, and attended Harvard University on a scholarship, where he earned a doctorate in 1954 and stayed on faculty for the next 17 years.
During much of that time, Kissinger served as a consultant to government agencies, including in 1967 when he acted as an intermediary for the State Department in Vietnam. He used his connections with President Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic administration to pass on information about peace negotiations to the Nixon camp.
When Nixon’s pledge to end the Vietnam War helped him win the 1968 presidential election, he brought in Kissinger as national security adviser.
But the process of “Vietnamization” — shifting the burden of the war from US forces to the South Vietnamese — was long and bloody, punctuated by massive US bombing of North Vietnam, the mining of the North’s harbors, and the bombing of Cambodia.
Kissinger declared in 1972 that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam, but the Paris Peace Accords signed in January 1973 were little more than a prelude to the final Communist takeover of the South two years later.
In 1973, in addition to his role as national security adviser, Kissinger was named secretary of state — giving him unchallenged authority in foreign affairs.
An intensifying Arab-Israeli conflict launched Kissinger on his first “shuttle” mission, a brand of highly personal, high-pressure diplomacy for which he became famous.
Thirty-two days of shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus helped Kissinger forge a long-lasting disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights.
In an effort to diminish Soviet influence, Kissinger reached out to its chief communist rival, China, and made two trips there, including a secret one to meet with Premier Zhou Enlai. The result was Nixon’s historic summit in Beijing with Chairman Mao Zedong and the eventual formalization of relations between the two countries.
Former US Ambassador to China Winston Lord, who served as Kissinger‘s special assistant, called his former boss a “tireless advocate for peace,” telling Reuters, “America has lost a towering champion for the national interest.”
STRATEGIC ARMS ACCORD
As secretary of state, Kissinger went with Ford in 1974 to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, where the president met Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and agreed to a basic framework for a strategic arms pact. The agreement capped Kissinger‘s pioneering efforts at detente that led to an easing of US-Soviet tensions.
But Kissinger‘s diplomatic skills had their limits. In 1975, he was blamed for failing to persuade Israel and Egypt to agree to a second-stage disengagement in the Sinai.
And in the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger drew heavy criticism for tilting toward Pakistan. Kissinger was heard calling the Indians “bastards” — a remark he later said he regretted.
Like Nixon, he feared the spread of left-wing ideas in the Western hemisphere, and his actions in response led to deep distrust of Washington by many Latin Americans for years to come.
In 1970, he plotted with the CIA on how best to topple the Marxist, democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, and in a memo after Argentina’s bloody coup in 1976 he said that the military dictators should be encouraged.
When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976, Kissinger‘s days in government power were largely over. The next Republican in the White House, Ronald Reagan, distanced himself from Kissinger, viewing him as out of step with his conservative constituency.
After leaving government, Kissinger set up a high-priced, high-powered consulting firm in New York, which offered advice to the world’s corporate elite. He served on company boards and various foreign policy and security forums, wrote books, and became a regular media commentator on international affairs.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush picked Kissinger to head an investigative committee. But outcry from Democrats who saw a conflict of interest with many of his consulting firm’s clients forced Kissinger to step down.
He remained active late in life, attending meetings in the White House, publishing a book on leadership, and testifying before a Senate committee about North Korea’s nuclear threat. In July 2023, he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Divorced from his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964, he married Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in 1974. He had two children by his first wife.
Kissinger Associates Inc. said in the statement announcing his death that Kissinger would be interred at a private family service, to be followed at a later date by a public memorial service in New York City.
The post Henry Kissinger, First Jewish US Secretary of State Who Shaped Cold War Diplomacy, Dies Aged 100 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran to Deny UN Inspectors Access to Nuclear Sites, Top Lawmaker Says, Amid Rising Pressure for New Deal
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
Iran will not grant access to its nuclear facilities during next week’s visit by a delegation from the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), amid growing international pressure to reach a nuclear deal and avoid new sanctions, according to a top Iranian lawmaker.
On Monday, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s parliament, Ebrahim Azizi, confirmed that the visiting IAEA team will only be authorized to hold “technical and expert-level talks” with Iranian officials and experts.
“According to the laws passed by parliament, Iran will not let physical access to its nuclear facilities under any circumstances,” Azizi said in a press conference reported by Iranian state-run media.
“No inspector from the IAEA team or any other foreign organization will be allowed to be present at our country’s nuclear sites,” the Iranian lawmaker continued.
In June, the Iranian parliament voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA “until the safety and security of [the country’s] nuclear activities can be guaranteed.”
At the time, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attributed the decision to IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi’s alleged bias against Tehran and a recent resolution accusing Iran of failing to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog over alleged “undeclared nuclear activities.”
“The IAEA and its Director-General are fully responsible for this sordid state of affairs,” Araghchi said in a post on X.
Grossi “directly facilitated the adoption of a politically-motivated resolution against Iran by the IAEA [Board of Governors] as well as the unlawful Israeli and US bombings of Iranian nuclear sites,” he continued.
During a press conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei explained that next week’s visit by IAEA officials to Iran is intended to discuss the “method of interaction” with the agency.
“We are facing exceptional circumstances, as the facilities of a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] have been illegally attacked by two nuclear-armed regimes,” Baghaei said.
“Unfortunately, the IAEA did not remain impartial, failed to condemn the attacks, and instead issued a report that provided a kind of political ground for making excuses,” the Iranian diplomat continued.
In June, Israel and the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to stop the regime from building nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
The UN nuclear watchdog’s upcoming visit comes as Iran faces growing international pressure to resume negotiations on its nuclear program.
Last month, Tehran made its first attempt at direct talks with European powers since Israel, with the support of the US, launched an airstrike campaign targeting the country’s nuclear facilities and ballistic-missile capabilities.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany — collectively known as the E3 — have previously warned they would reinstate UN sanctions on Tehran if no new agreement is reached by the end of August.
The sanctions were originally lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which imposed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for large-scale sanctions relief.
Although the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under President Donald Trump’s first administration, Iran and the three European nations have continued to uphold the deal.
Under the UN Security Council resolution implementing the nuclear accord, international sanctions could be reimposed on Iran through a “snapback” mechanism that would take about 30 days.
As for the United States, Iran has insisted that Washington must compensate Tehran for the losses incurred during the recent 12-day war with Israel to pave the way for renewed negotiations.
However, Araghchi made clear that a deal would remain off the table as long as Trump continued to demand that Iran commit to zero uranium enrichment.
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US Sen. Cory Booker Refuses to Endorse Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor
US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). Photo: Reuters / Rebecca Cook.
US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) declined to endorse New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in his bid for New York City mayor, underscoring a simmering divide within the Democratic party over whether to embrace the anti-Israel politician.
Booker, a former presidential candidate known for his progressive rhetoric and background in community activism, has often walked a careful line when it comes to the party’s internal divisions. When asked last week by CNN reporter Manu Raju whether he would support Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist, Booker said, “I have learned a long time ago, to let New York politics be New York politics. We have enough challenges in New Jersey.”
Citing heated gubernatorial and legislative races, Booker said his energy will be devoted to his home state of New Jersey before adding, “New York City, I love you. You’re my neighbor. You’re about 10 miles from where I live. You guys figure out your elections. I’m going to be focused on mine.”
Booker’s response came after he dodged an initial question from Raju asking if the senator would support Mamdani, who won the New York City Democratic mayoral in June.
“So, you and I are going to have this conversation, and I’m going to say to you one day, I told you so,” Booker responded. “This is not a left-right issue. It really isn’t. It is an authoritarian, versus people who want pragmatic government that makes a difference in the lives of the American people. I’m one of these people that says the lines that divide us in America are not nearly as strong as the ties that bind us.”
“Big corporations, people want to keep our eyes on the screen, want to pit us against each other and tell us how much we should hate each other,” he continued. “I’m sorry, the left-right lens is not the right lens to look at this right now. Right now, it is, can we get back to the pragmatic work of governing?”
Booker’s refusal to endorse Mandani broader tensions within the Democratic party over the rising influence of its far-left, progressive wing, particularly among younger lawmakers who have been outspoken critics of US military aid to Israel. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has drawn national attention for his calls to end what he describes as unconditional support for the Israeli government, a position that has attracted both praise from progressive activists and backlash from pro-Israel groups and establishment Democrats.
Booker, who has long positioned himself as a supporter of Israel while also advocating for Palestinian rights, has grown increasingly cautious in recent years about aligning with candidates whose positions might alienate key constituencies. Despite the growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic base, Booker has remained outspoken about the need to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. Booker regularly wears a yellow ribbon pin on the lapel of his suit jacket as a sign of his support for the hostages.
Many observers have argued that the New York City mayoral race, though local, is a proxy battle for the future of the Democratic party, with some claiming that Mamdani’s blend of left-wing economic policies and anti-Zionism are reflective of the party’s increasingly progressive base.
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assemblymember and proud democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
A little-known politician before this year’s primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani also defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”
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Harvard President Denies Looming $500 Million Deal With Trump to Restore Federal Funding: Report
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect via Brian Snyder
Harvard University President Alan Garber has told faculty that he will not settle the institution’s dispute with the Trump administration by shelling out $500 million, the Harvard Crimson reported on Monday, contradicting a New York Times article which claimed that the move is impending.
Rather, Harvard has resolve to continue on fighting the federal government in court, the Crimson said, even as it faces a $1 billion shortfall caused by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the confiscation of $3 billion in taxpayer-funded research grants and contracts previously awarded to the university. Amid this cash crunch Harvard has resorted to leveraging its immense wealth to borrow exorbitant sums of money.
In March it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of an ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” It offered another $750 million in bonds to investors in April, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
According to the Crimson, Garber insists that the Times report is erroneous.
“In a conversation with one faculty member, [he] said that the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’ and claimed that the figure was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials,” the Crimson said, noting that the Times believes its reporting is on the mark. “In any discussions, Garber reportedly said, the university is treating academic freedom as nonnegotiable.”
Garber’s apparent assurances to faculty that the university will not concede to Trump for financial relief comes as it takes conciliatory steps that seem aimed at reversing an impression that it is doctrinally far left, as well as anti-Zionist. In July, it announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions and shuttered its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, transferring their staff to other sections of the university. These moves came after it “paused” a partnership in March with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. Some reports, according to the Crimson, suggest that Harvard may even found a “new conservative research institute” in any deal with the Trump administration.
Other Ivy League schools have made similar steps while resolving their funding disputes with the US federal government.
On Wednesday, Brown University announced that it agreed to pay $50 million and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism. The government is rewarding Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million in federal research grants and contracts it impounded.
Per the agreement, shared by university president Christina Paxson, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”
Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.
Only days ago, Columbia University agreed to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon commented on the resolution, saying it is a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”
Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practicers, and DEI programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race.”
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon continued. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
As Harvard debates its future, it continues to be a theater of an unrelenting debate on the Israel-Hamas war and the US-Israel relationship. On Saturday, pro-Hamas protesters instigated their arrests by local law enforcement during an unauthorized demonstration at Harvard Square.
“At least three protesters were pushed to the ground and handcuffed by police officers,” the Harvard Crimson reported on Sunday. “Several protesters were seen pouring water on their eyes, which were red and apparently irritated by a chemical agent.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.