Tribute to John White: A Close Friend, A Great Leader, A Noble Man

John P. White, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Harvard Kennedy School professor, and member of the Belfer Center's Board of Directors, passed away on September 3, 2017, at the age of 80.

John White was my dear friend and close colleague for many years. I first got to know him well during the late 1990s. By then John had already done a great deal for public policy, the United States, and the Department of Defense.  After a time at RAND, John worked at OMB and then as Assistant Secretary of Defense. One of his many accomplishments at the Pentagon during that period was to make the All-Volunteer Force, which replaced the draft, a success. Success was far from assured after Vietnam, but it is now the principal factor making America’s military history’s finest.

My friendship with John began at the Kennedy School when he was Director of the Center for Business and Government (now the Mossavar-Rahmani Center). John was a major architect of bipartisan approaches to the federal budget woes of the time, which are sadly not that different from today’s. His ideas were widely hailed. In fact, they provided the intellectual foundation for the wildfire candidacy of H. Ross Perot for President.

John and I grew closer when we both served in the Defense Department during the Clinton administration.  He was Deputy Secretary of Defense to both secretaries Bill Perry and Bill Cohen. I learned a great deal from the managerial skill and dedication to the troops John showed. He was also an example of civility and good comportment of the kind so often missing in today’s Washington.

But we worked most closely while at Harvard from 1998 to 2008. John and I designed and co-taught two sister courses on national security: one on strategy and foreign policy; the other on management and budgeting.

We pioneered techniques that I separately introduced to Spring Exercise, focusing on intense feedback on practical assignments of the kind that prepared students for real-world leadership – memos and briefings rather than lengthy term papers. The students loved John. He was attentive and generous with his time. He and Betty hosted memorable Southern barbecues for students at their home in Beacon Hill at the end of every term. The wonderful spread was only surpassed by the warm hospitality. My daughter Ava, who often accompanied me to these dinners, still raves about the warmth and kindness both Betty and John extended to her as a child.

The students showed their deep appreciation for John in 2004, by selecting him for the Manuel Carballo Teaching Award – an award that recognizes a faculty member's dedication to students, excellence in the professional field, and commitment to public service.

Dedication. Excellence. Commitment. Traits John embodied in every aspect of his life, but especially his professional career. His teaching legacy now includes a world populated with alumni who strive to make the world a safer place, all the while maintaining the professional standards and common decency to which he held himself accountable throughout his career.

In the years I served later in the Pentagon, I had a standing bet with my staff as I walked off the airplane or helicopter at a military installation, wartime operating base, or foreign capital:  that somewhere out there among the people – U.S. or non-U.S. – whom we would meet would be a student from the Kennedy School and usually from John’s and my courses (we had a strongly international class). I always won the bet.  Once I stepped off a helicopter at a remote combat outpost in Afghanistan, and the commander strode forward to introduce himself – a Kennedy School alum. He apologized for asking, but he had a reporter embedded with his unit from a major international news organization. Would I come into his command post and speak to the reporter. I did, and the reporter introduced himself as a former student as well. I believe the two got along better after that.

John was hilariously funny and had an enormous mental library of dumb jokes.  Who can forget the one about the French, British, and Chinese officials marooned on a desert island…the New Yorker kidnapped by cannibals…the shipwrecked rabbi?

We were also research partners, co-editing Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future, a book on the future of national security that still makes good reading today.  John worked on Bill Perry’s and my Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project with John Shalikashvili, Liz Sherwood-Randall, Gretchen Bartlett, and others.  This research, like John’s teaching, covered a wide range of subjects, from China and Russia to terrorism and peacekeeping, and from military recruiting to advanced weapons. 

In addition to being intellectual partners, John and I were also business partners in a company called Global Technology Partners that we founded with Bill Perry, John Deutch, Paul Kaminski, Bob Hermann, John Stenbit, Pug Winokur, and Irv Yoskowitz. We had more fun hanging around together than we did investing, but the company was successful.

I am truly grateful to have had such a friend in John. Steph and I appreciated both Betty and John making it to our wedding. For a man as soft-spoken as John was, he made bold statements in so many other ways.  In addition to driving around Boston in a fancy car, he pulled off bowties and suspenders better than anyone I have ever met. Above and beyond telling silly jokes along the ivied halls of Harvard and the bustling corridors of the E-ring, John spoke fondly of his children and grandchildren, and – of course, Betty.  I know they will miss him even more than I.

I am but one of many colleagues that miss him already. Juliette Kayyem succeeded him in the Robert and Renée Belfer Lecturer position he held at the Kennedy School. I know what pride she feels following in his footsteps. They certainly are enormous ones to fill.

In 2008, President-elect Obama asked both of us to join the defense and intelligence transition team, John as co-chair (with Michèle Flournoy, herself a former Kennedy School researcher). I went on to become Undersecretary, Deputy Secretary, and then Secretary, and during all those years and right up until the last, I could count on John’s counsel and friendship.

I have lost a close friend. The Kennedy School has lost one of its greats. The United States has lost a great defense leader. The world has lost a noble man who embodied all that is good and decent in public life.