Tag: Peace Corps
How I Invented the Peace Corps (Sort Of)
by Gerald Kamens One morning in March 1959, a top secret policy paper appeared on my boss’s desk at Dwight Eisenhower’s Bureau of the Budget—later reborn as the Office of Management and Budget. Its subject: How to counter the Soviet … Read more
Responding to the Call for Volunteers “From Every Race and Walk of Life”
by John Coyne
U.S. Ambassadors who Served in the Peace Corps
Editor’s note: This is an unofficial list compiled by John Coyne. Please send any additions or corrections to editor@americandiplomacy.org.
Uncle Sam, Matchmaker
by Ben East I pictured myself in a Peace Corps-issue hammock on an island somewhere, or crossing high glaciers in the glaring Himalayan sun. Then the recruiter called and offered Malawi. Pointless to remind her what I’d written where the … Read more
Peace Corps’ early days: The day the FBI came knocking
by John C. Long Reprinted with permission from http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/peace-corps-early-days-the-day-the-fbi-came-knocking/ John F. Kennedy founded the Peace Corps shortly after his inauguration to fulfill a promise he’d made to University of Michigan students at a bull session after a presidential campaign speech. … Read more
Why the Peace Corps?
by John Coyne On this last day of 2016, I thought I might try and chart the impulses in America that brought about the creation of the Peace Corps–something positive to think about as we wait for 2017–and before all … Read more
Letter from Niger May 2003
The Winds of War Blow By It would be overstating the case to say that the Iraq War turned out to be a non-event in Niger…but not by much. In the months leading up to the war, many of us … Read more
J. R. Bullington on the Niger River, AIDS, and volunteer marriage
by J. R. Bullington Storks and rains The annual rains, along with the migratory storks that always accompany them, arrived early this year,promising relief from food shortages and threatened famine. Substantial expanses of greenery now mark the orange-brown landscape; dry … Read more
Letters from Niger: Peace Corps Adventures in the Sahara
When Jim Bullington, a former U.S. ambassador and regular contributor to these pages, decided he’d had enough of retirement, he applied for a Peace Corps position and soon found himself in West Africa. He promised to keep our readers posted … Read more