Archive - 2018

The Volunteers of Philippines II arrived in January; Associate Representative John Cort flew in in February; Philippines III arrived in March. The Volunteers were sent out to additional schools in the Bicol and the Visayas. Cort was kept in the new headquarters in Manila. For 12 years before coming to the Peace Corps, Cort, a cum laude graduate of Harvard, had served as executive secretary of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Boston. Cort’s newspaper background made him a natural to assist in the production of “Ang Boluntargo,” the Volunteer newsletter in the Philippines which commenced regular monthly publication as he Voluntario with the issue of December, 1961. In June, 1962, Philippines IV arrived and the new Volunteers were assigned to schools on Cebu and Bohol islands. There were then 271 Volunteers at work in the educational aide program, a figure that would double in September with the arrival of groups . . .

  Donna Shalala (Iran 1962-64) Florida, Won       John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1966-68), California, Won       Joe Kennedy III (Dominican Republic 2003-05) Massachusetts, Won       Rick Neal, (Morocco 1988-93) Ohio, Lost       Shireen Ghorbani (Moldova 2003-05) Utah, Lost  

  WASHINGTON – President Donald J. Trump  announced today his intent to nominate Alan R. Swendiman to serve as Deputy Director of the Peace Corps. Currently, Swendiman serves as Founding Principal of The Capitol Connection, LLC, a government contract consulting firm practicing in the areas of strategy, business development, and operational management. Previously, Swendiman served as a legal advisor and senior executive for a broad range of federal agencies, including serving as Deputy Principal Legal Advisor and Chief of Staff for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2010-2016), General Counsel of the United States Agency for International Development (2008-2010), General Counsel and Acting Chief of Staff of the U.S. General Services Administration (2005-2006), and General Counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (1992-1993). Swendiman has also held positions with the Executive Office of the President and with the State of North Carolina, overseeing administrative services and information technology. In addition, he has more than 30 years . . .

  Arriving for work on or before March 1, 1961, the day President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the Peace Corps, were a few women who were early volunteer staffers and who would become famous in those first years of the agency. The majority of these women were well connected by family or friends to Shriver and eager to work at the Peace Corps, the shining star of Kennedy’s administration. The Peace Corps was the “hot” agency and everyone, of course, wanted to be connected to Kennedy — if they couldn’t be in the White House — they wanted to be with Shriver and the Peace Corps. The women at the time were mostly “second class” citizens in the world-of-work. They were not, for example, sitting at the “big conference table” at Senior Staff meetings. Looking at old black-and-photos of Peace Corps HQ meetings, you might see that Elizabeth (Betty) Forsling Harris had wedged herself into the group, . . .

  The American Government Works A column by  Tom Hebert (Nigeria 1962-64) Published on November 2,2018   The Pendleton Post Office was built in 1916 during a time of support for the U.S. government.   Next time you’re in downtown Pendleton, visit the post office at the corner of Southwest Dorion and First Street. There, on an old plaque cemented to the wall are the words: “This brick building was constructed in 1916 by the Federal Government and has been in continuous use as a Post Office and Courthouse since that time … The symmetry and classical elements of the style create a feeling of monumentality and permanence appropriate to civic structures. The confidence in the government inspired by public buildings of this time must have seemed particularly important at a time when the front page of the newspaper was devoted almost entirely to the developments of the First World . . .

  Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Marty Burns (Somalia 1963-65) • Opinions A blue wave is predicted for the midterms. I’m not convinced. By Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963—65) November 1 at 6:39 PM Paul Theroux is the author, most recently, of “Figures in a Landscape: People and Places.” OAXACA, MEXICO I have quite a lot of sympathy for certain Trump voters, and (wait, please, let me finish) I’ve been making a list of some concerns that Donald Trump the candidate (I beg you to stop interrupting me — this won’t take long) raised when he was on the campaign trail and in the White House. If the Democrats (thank you, I appreciate your patience) ignore these subjects, they risk losing next week and in 2020. The president got my attention in September when the subject of new tariffs on China arose — tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods. Certain Apple products . . .

Here is the latest news about The Towering Task, the Peace Corps Documentary in production  by RPCV Alana deJoseph (Mali 92-94). Building Bridges The Peace Corps and its long history of building bridges stand in stark contrast to the terrible news we seem to be reading about on an almost daily basis these days. While we’re assembling this documentary, it’s feeling like we are also getting the opportunity to respond to so much divisiveness, anger, and fear with a story of hope. We are inspired by your stories and steadfast support to keep building bridges – whether with people on the other side of the globe or our neighbors. Yes, it is much easier to respond with our own anger, fears, and frustrations, but making peace, reaching out, and healing the wounds that others have inflicted is what the Peace Corps and the RPCV community do day in and day out. Changing . . .

After Alice Gilbert took her degree at Radcliffe in American government (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude), she fell into a debate with herself on whether to enter Government service or go to law school. “My father finally convinced me that training for law was just excellent training in general,” she now says, “and besides, once I got into law, I found I liked it.” Her decision—which brought her to Yale Law School, where, in her senior year, she became a member of the Law Journal—was doubtless assisted by the fact that both her father and mother are lawyers. “But so is everyone else in the family,” she adds—which might be explained by the fact that her grandfather was the late Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. If Ms. Gilbert’s second alternative—entering Government service—is now also fulfilled, that can large be credited to the Experiment in International Living, the organization in . . .

Harris Wofford, the principal founder of the Student Federalists, had been the organization’s first president. Fuchs, then a student at New York University, followed tradition when he became president by interrupting his studies to spend one year traveling and speaking. He had already postponed his college work once before, when he served a wartime stint in the Navy Hospital Corps. But he had his Phi Deta Kappa key in 1950 when, at the age of 23, he graduated with honors in political science. Five years later, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard, three years after he had already joined the faculty at Brandeis University. By 1959, Dean of Faculty at Brandeis, he had already written two books, The Political Behavior of American Jews and a lengthy social and political history of Hawaii entitled Hawaii Pono. As an activist as well as a theoretician inn politics, Fuchs was receptive to the . . .

In September, 1958, Bill Josephson went to England to write a doctoral dissertation in history at St. Antony’s College, one of the two graduate colleges at Oxford University. He set himself what he still describes as “a fascinating thesis problem: what were the other Americans, other than President Wilson and Colonel House, doing at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919? “The American delegation included numbers of people who were to become first magnitude figures—Lippmann, Grew, Bullitt, Frankfurter, Dulles, Baruch”—but exactly what they were doing from day to day has by and large remained a mystery.” Fascinating or not, the thesis was never completed because the young lawyer met Diana Hayward Bailey, a London girl whom he proceeded to court and marry. On the other side of the world, one Earl Reynolds had just stated an anti-bomb demonstration by sailing his yacht, Phoenix, into the Pacific testing area. Just before leaving . . .

On its second birthday, March 1, 1963, the Peace Corps counted 624 Volunteers at work in the Philippines. Except for 22 men assigned to a rural community action program in the large southern island of Mindanao, the so-called “Texas of the Philippines,” all the Volunteers, men and women, were employed as teachers—some at the university and secondary levels but most of them in elementary schools. This meant that the Philippines was the setting for the largest single overseas educational program that the United States had ever mounted. It was also by a considerable margin the largest program in the Peace Corps—and would continue to be so for 10 more months. As the Peace Corps planned the program in conformance with requests from the Philippines government—the republic served as host to 650 Volunteers by the autumn of 1963, some of whom were assigned for the first time to the lushly tropical . . .

By a common rule of politics, freshmen legislators are expected to keep their mouths closed and their ears open. Carlie Peters managed to shatter the rule without rousing so much as a dirty look. The fact that he may have set a record for first-term accomplishment in the West Virginia House of Delegates is, he admits, due to at least one unusual circumstance. “I had already served two years as clerk of the House Judiciary Committee,” Peter explains. “So I knew the other Delegates—and they knew me—before I was elected. Afterward, I was in quite a different position than if I had been a perfect stranger. I was a familiar figure in the Capitol and no one thought I was trying to be a whiz kid by pushing legislation.” In this situation, Peters went ahead—and rolled up a remarkable score. He drafted and sponsored the state’s first civil service law. . . .