Archive - 2016

  Peace Corps may be “Forever Young” in the public imagination but in reality, it is one of the oldest “new” federal agencies. Its fifty-five years of operation will take a gigantic effort to accurately document. Public, independent and well funded, a Peace Corps Library needs more to be successful. It needs a professional Librarian Research staff, a RPCV advisory committee, an Internet presence as well as a physical location.   Why a Professional Librarian Research Staff? The materials, books, documents, memorabilia and electronic items are scattered all over. Some are in the public domain; some are in private or public university collections. Most of the documents from Peace Corps’ first decades are hard copy and have not been digitalized. The expertise of a professional Librarian Research staff is necessary to locate all of the items, to create a catalog system and to work to make these items accessible, even if . . .

  Far Away In the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–67) First Peace Corps Writers Edition June 2016 346 pages $18.85 (paperback) Reviewed by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961–63) • The Biafran war for independence from Nigeria ended 47 years ago (1970), yet the horrors that occurred before and during the civil war linger. So does the idea of Biafra: an independent African state created by Africans, not by a European colonial power drawing the boundaries, a modern state with an efficient and productive democratic government. They seem to have a life of their own. One of the reasons for this was a dramatic humanitarian airlift operated from the remote island of Sao Tome to shuttle food and medical supplies into Biafra for a civilian population being deliberately starved into submission. The airlift was organized by a hodgepodge of church and humanitarian organizations, contracted planes and . . .

  Reading & Book Signing Steve Murphy, who worked briefly as a Republican political appointee (Schedule C) at the Peace Corps as Regional Director for the Inter-Americas Region (2002-2003), will do a reading and signing of his book at the University of Washington bookstore this week. Murphy’s On the Edge: An Odyssey is a memoir of his life working in Rio de Janeiro as an international banker and at Hollywood studios, to be a political employee in both Bush administrations. He will talk about how he kept his composure and helped others. Murphy is  a University of Washington graduate. University Bookstore’s Author’s Showcase is this Tuesday, Dec. 6, 6-8pm – parking is free in bookstore lot.: Check out the website for more information.

On January 20, 2017, 30 Schedule Cs (Political Appointees) will walk out the door of the agency. They have already submitted their letters of resignation to the White House. In their place, civil servants, not connected to anyone’s campaign, past or present, will take over running the agency. It could be months before the new administration gets around to appointing a new corps of 30 Schedule Cs to run the agency. One thing we can be pretty sure of, none of them will come from the ranks of RPCVs. The question remains: will there be a Peace Corps in the Age of Trump? The word from Washington is that the Peace Corps has a good deal of support on both sides of the aisle and that it even might grow in the years ahead. Some conservative Republican congressmen and senators, I’m told, would like to dismantle certain agencies and give that . . .

Donald Trump has chosen Elaine Chao, the former Labor Secretary, Peace Corps Director, and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be Transportation Secretary, an official briefed on the matter told CNN on Tuesday. The announcement is expected to come this afternoon. RPCVs will remember how Chao would burst into tears when talking about meeting PCVs overseas. It became a joke with them; they would laugh at the woman who couldn’t believe Americans would “volunteer” to live in the developing world. (She wouldn’t, of course.) She also earned the reputation of scheduling hair appointments every day while traveling in the developing world, and for not meeting with government officials but rather spend her time, when she could, playing volleyball with Volunteers. Back in DC, she was famous for her ‘little bell’ that she kept on her desk so she could summon her secretary from the outer office when she . . .

Regardless of what else might be said about the “Gale Method” it established two important elements for the Peace Corps. HQ staff now understood how recruitment was done, and had acquired the skills that would make them effective recruiters. More importantly was that within the first years, the Peace Corps was established as part of campus life. Peace Corps Recruiters would be invited back every year, and would be welcomed, often with the same deference and cooperation shown in 1963. By now, and this was early in 1965, the Peace Corps was starting the “In, Up & Out” policy that Robert Textor had crafted in a memo for the agency, and Bob Gale was thinking of leaving. He didn’t want to be Director of Recruiting for Life, as Shriver had declared at the senior staff meeting in March 1963. Gale wanted to leave when the going was good. In the academic year 1963-64, his recruiting techniques had bought in thirty-six . . .

Bob Gale was apprehensive being called into Moyers’s office. It wasn’t Moyers’s way to have a tete-a-tete. Moyers was edgy standing behind his desk, and while only about 27 at the time, he appeared “fatherly,” thought Bob. There had been “talk,” Bill told Gale. Talk of ‘after-hour’ antics on the California advance trip. Moyers told Gale that as the head of Recruitment it was his responsibility to behave himself and to see that others did at well. They (the recruiters) had no right to ‘party on a business trip at government expense.’ He told Gale that his ‘antics’ could bring shame to the Peace Corps. “He was being very‘Baptist’ with me,” Gale recalled. Moyers had also been “thoroughly informed” as to all of their doings in California and had exaggerated them in his mind, or his informer had exaggerated them to the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps. Moyers told Gale that it was dangerous to cavort into . . .

The Senate on Thursday passed the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill which seeks to empower, develop and provide gainful employment for youths. The Bill, which was sponsored by Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume(APC-Borno), was first read at plenary on March 10, 2016 and scaled second reading. It seeks to facilitate peace volunteerism, community service, neighborhood watch and nation building. The bill will also facilitate the training of youths to advance the course of peacebuilding and conflict transformation through peace education, mediation, and conflict resolution among warring groups or communities where there is crisis in Nigeria. The passage of the Bill followed a report presented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Interior, Sen. Bayero Nafada (APC-Gombe North) after clause by clause consideration. According to the report, the head of the corps will be referred to as Commandant General with six Deputy Commandants from the six geopolitical zones of the country. The headquarters of the corps would be domiciled . . .

The current issue of The ChronicleReview, November 25, 2016, is devoted to the reaction on college campuses to the Trump win. One article by Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80) I found particularly insightful and on target to “why Trump won.” Roland, as you may know, is the author of his Peace Corp novel, Leaving Losapas, published in 1992. He is also written twenty books of fiction, and non-fiction, and is a former faculty member at Bennington and Amherst Colleges, and now teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Lesley University. He is also a great golfer, which as we know, covers all necessary qualifications. Just ask Trump. — jc • What Liberal Academics Don’t Get By Roland Merullo  NOVEMBER 20, 2016 All the election postmortems make me think of the disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards, who famously talked about “the two Americas.” There are different ways to delineate these two Americas: according to race, . . .

The most famous recruitment trip of them all was in early October 1963. It was the one that gave rise to the term, Blitz Recruiting. Gale put together five advance teams and five follow-up teams. Each team spent a week in southern California and then a week in northern California, visiting every major campus in both areas. Coates Redmon sums up the ‘teams’ in her book. “One advance team consisting of Nan McEvoy, then deputy director of the Africa Regional Office, and Frank Erwin, then deputy director of Selection, were assigned first to Los Angeles Sate University (where there was only modest interest in the Peace Corps) and next to San Francisco State University (where there was considerable interests). Bob Gale, Linda Lyle (his secretary) and Doug Kiker took on the University of Southern California in the south and then the University of California at Berkeley in the north. Gale had friends at both.” . . .