 He received a Ph.D in government from Harvard University in 1975.In 1976 Joffe started his career with "Die Zeit" as a political writer and grew into managing the "Zeit" Dossier department, an important and often lengthy part of this newspaper which elaborates a single topic on several pages.From 1982 to 1984 he was a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and from 1985 to 2000 he was columnist and editorial page editor for "Süddeutsche Zeitung".