Archive - October 2012

[Ambassador Chris Stevens was a PCV in Morocco from 1983-85.  He served twice in Libya in three different Foreign Service capacities, first, as Deputy Chief of Mission from 2007-09;  then as Special Representative to Libya’s National Transitional Council from March 2011 to November 2011; and  finally as Ambassador from June 2012 until his death on September 11, 2012.] Learning of Chris Stevens’ Death While Reading The Aeneid by Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) What intel the White House should have known/acted upon before the 9/11 attack and killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues in Libya is triggering partisan arguments sullying the memory of Stevens’ sacrifice.  Or so the current gamesmanship seems to this former Peace Corps Volunteer. Lots of the 200,000 Americans who, like I, have served as Volunteers never knew, prior to the violence in Benghazi, that the Peace Corps first sent young Chris Stevens to Morocco.  Later the State . . .

The early identification of the Peace Corps was that it was an agency filled with B.A. Generalists Volunteers. That evaluation was pretty much true. The majority of  Trainees in ’61 and ’62 were June graduates who went immediately back to school that summer and into 2-3 month Training Programs on colleges and universities across the country. Of the first 1,150 Volunteers to join the agency, more than two-thirds had Bachelor’s degrees; one in 10 had an advanced degree–an M.A. or Ph.D.  The Peace Corps HQ building was also full of academic types. In 1961 there were 31 Ph.D’s, 42 M.A.’s, and 20 LL.B’s on the Washington executive and advisory staff. Overseas, in Latin America alone, there were eight doctorates, all graduates of  Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and the University of Chicago.  So it is not surprising that the agency  turned to 36 institutions from the East Ivy League schools, through the Mid-West, and onto California to direct Training Programs. By . . .

When the Peace Corps started  on March 1, 1961 there were few guidelines on how to train Peace Corps Volunteers for work in the developing world. Ordinary Americans had rarely been trained systematically for service overseas. As a result most Americans living abroad, whether privately or as officials, did not have a real understanding of the society in which they found themselves. There was no such thing as Cross Culture Training in 1961. The Peace Corps, setting up shop, planned to avoid this. So, of course,  the agency called a meeting! The Associate Director Lawrence Dennis actually sponsored a series of  what was called Peace Corps Institutes that brought together people from government agencies, universities, foundations, business, labor and professional and academic societies. Conferences were next convened to discuss how to train for particular nations around the world. Next conference were held to get advice on how to train Volunteers for . . .

High Risk/High Gain criteria was only the first phase of the early Peace Corps selection process. In theory (and those of us who were around in those days remember being victims of a lot of ‘theory’) selection began with a person filling out the questionnaire and returning it to the Peace Corps. This process of volunteering represented a kind of ‘self-selection” and according to the early staffers, “it in no small part was responsible for the generally high caliber of Peace Corps applicants.” Further “self-selection” took place with the applicant was sent an invitation to train for a specific project and was free to accept or decline the invitation. At the time, potential PCVs had listed various references on his or her questionnaire and they were contacted.  The attention that these people gave their replied surprised the Peace Corps Selection Staff and therefore was a tool for final decision making. Interestingly, . . .