Archive - November 4, 2014

Thanks to an alert from Kitty Thuermer (Mali 1977-79) I’ve learned that David Hapgood, one of the legendary early evaluators of the Peace Corps has passed away in New York. Hapgood co-authored the first inside Peace Corps books on the agency, Agents of Change: A Close Look at the Peace Corps. It was written with another evaluator, Meridan Bennett. In their acknowledgments they state that: “This book is anything but official,” and then go onto praise their boss, Charlie Peters, who headed the Peace Corps Division of Evaluation from 1962 to the spring of 1968. As they write, “The unique process of self-criticism known in the Peace Corps as evaluation would never have existed without Charlie Peters’ courage and imagination.” Hapgood and Bennett’s book was published by Little, Brown & Company in 1968. I always enjoyed that the book was dedicated to “H.C.N. Without whom this book would never have . . .