For Immediate Release: June 27, 2005
Further information: Brent R. Carney (617) 514-1662, Brent.Carney@JFKLFoundation.org
Boston, MA – Today the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum kicked off a week-long educational conference for public school teachers featuring nationally prominent speakers such as presidential advisory Theodore Sorensen and journalist Seymour Topping, the first western correspondent stationed in Vietnam. The conference will give 35-40 teachers an account of the Cold War through the Kennedy Years from those who witnessed this tumultuous period of American and World history first hand. The week-long program is being made possible by a Teaching American History grant from the US Department of Education in conjunction with the Boston Public Schools.
Teachers taking part in this conference, which runs from June 27-July 1, will be able to bring what they learn back into the classroom to share with their students and fellow teachers. Taking part in this program will be:
Theodore C. Sorensen, Special Counsel, principal speech writer and close advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Since the 1960’s Mr. Sorensen has practiced international law, advising and assisting many foreign governments and leaders including Anwar Sadat and Nelson Mandela.
Maureen Carroll worked in Manila starting in October, 1961 as a Charter member of the US Peace Corps. She was assigned to a Philippines education project from 1961 to 1963, and then worked at Peace Corps headquarters for close to five years as a program evaluator in Latin America, Asia and Africa. After two decades in the private sector, Ms. Carroll returned to the Peace Corps in 1991 as the Country Director in Botswana. She later managed the Planning, Policy and Analysis Office at Peace Corps headquarters, and from 1996 to 1999 served as director of the Africa region, responsible for operations in approximately 25 countries with 2500 volunteers.
Thomas J. Scanlon was in the first group of Peace Corps volunteers sent to Latin America. On the same day that Maureen Carroll landed in Manila, Tom Scanlon arrived in Chile, where he did cooperative development work with the Institute for Rural Education. He was later chosen to represent the Peace Corps at the funeral of John F. Kennedy. Mr. Scanlon is the founder and President of Benchmarks, Inc., a professional consulting business in Washington, DC specializing in international trade, federal relations and development of charitable organizations. In 1997, he published a memoir of his Peace Corps experiences, Waiting for the Snow: The Peace Corps Papers of a Charter Volunteer.
Donald M. Wilson worked as a foreign correspondent for LIFE magazine, covering the Korean War and the French-Indochina War before taking over as the LIFE Washington Bureau Chief in 1957. In 1960, Mr. Wilson joined Sen. John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign staff as assistant press secretary. After the election, Kennedy appointed him to be Deputy Director to Edward R. Murrow at the U.S. Information Agency. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Donald Wilson was part of the ExCom, which he considers the apex of his career. He later became Vice President for Public Affairs at Time Inc., where he worked for 25 years. In 1991, he co-founded the Independent Journalism Foundation to provide training for journalists who had spent most of their lives under Communist rule. The Foundation has established centers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Cambodia.
Carl Kaysen was a professor of economics at Harvard University when he was appointed by President Kennedy in 1961 as Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. He became an influential foreign policy adviser, playing a key role in the Berlin crisis, in reorganizing foreign trade policy, and in pressing for a nuclear test ban treaty. He accompanied Ambassador Averill Harriman on the Moscow mission that resulted in the signing of a limited test ban agreement in August 1963. Since 1976, Professor Kaysen has been on the faculty at MIT, where his current research centers on arms control and international politics.
Seymour Topping became the first western correspondent to be stationed in Vietnam in 1950 when he opened the AP bureau in Saigon, covering the war in French Indochina. In October 1951, he and his wife Audrey were visited by Congressman John F. Kennedy, who was on a "study" tour of the Middle East and Asia. The next time he saw JFK was ten years later in Vienna, at the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit. Mr. Topping was then chief Moscow correspondent for The New York Times and later became chief correspondent for Southeast Asia (1963-66). He subsequently served as foreign editor and managing editor of The Times, as a professor of international journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and as administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. Seymour Topping’s latest book Fatal Crossroads, A Novel of Vietnam 1945 was published earlier this year.
Audrey Topping is an acclaimed author and photojournalist. She has written and illustrated several books about China and published in many major magazines, including Foreign Affairs, Time, Life, The New York Times Magazine and Reader’s Digest. Mrs. Topping’s father, Chester Ronning, a distinguished Canadian diplomat, served as special envoy to Hanoi and Saigon in 1966 in an effort to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.
Harlan Cleveland was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs by President Kennedy in January, 1961. He was charged with coordinating policy between the White House, State Department and the US mission to the United Nations, working closely with UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. This placed him in a key position during each of the international crises of the Kennedy years. In particular, he was deeply involved in the successful effort to resolve the secession crisis in the Congo and reunify the country. From 1965 to 1969, Mr. Cleveland served as US Ambassador to NATO. He was later President of the University of Hawaii, Founding Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and President of the World Academy of Art and Science. Harlan Cleveland has authored eleven books and hundreds of articles on executive leadership and world affairs, and is currently working on a memoir.
Each morning the sessions will begin with a lecture by David Engerman, who teaches modern American diplomatic, intellectual, and political history at Brandeis University. Professor Engerman will also serve as moderator in discussions with our distinguished guests. Teachers will also have the opportunity to work with the Kennedy Presidential Library’s significant holdings of primary sources, including historical documents, photos, recordings and film footage from the Cold War era in the early 1960’s.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through scholarship, educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.
The Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the exceptions of Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The Research Room is open 8:30 am – 4:30 pm each weekday, and is closed on weekends and Federal Holidays. The Library is located in the Dorchester section of Boston, off Morrissey Boulevard, next to the campus of the University of Massachusetts/Boston. Parking is free. There is free shuttle-service from the JFK/UMass T Stop on the Red Line. The Museum is fully handicapped accessible. For more information, call (866) JFK-1960.