Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott
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Library of Congress Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project ROBERT J. KOTT Interviewed by: Raymond Ewing Initial interview date: November 21, 2000 Copyright 2007 ADST [Note: This interview was not edited by Mr. Kott] Q: This is an Oral History interview with Robert J. Kott. It's the 21st of November 200. This is being conducted under auspices of Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. My name is Raymond Ewing. Bob, I see that you entered the Foreign Service in 1971, but it looks like you perhaps had some prior government or military service before that. But, let me sort of back you up. If you could tell us first a little bit about where you grew up, and how you got interested in the Foreign Service. KOTT: Fairly easy answer, Ray. Born and raised in New York City, went to school in New York City. Joined the Peace Corps after college, and went to India for two years and that sort of changed my life and gave me some direction as a young pup. From there I went back to graduate school at the University of Oregon to do a Masters program in International Studies focusing mainly on South Asian studies. I took the Foreign Service exam while I was out there, somewhat of a lark because I was really more interested in development work, either with an NGO (non-governmental organization) or USAID (United States Agency for International Development). In fact I had applied to USAID and had been accepted for I think it was their Vietnam refugee relief program, something to that Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001575 Library of Congress effect as my memory serves me. I continued on at school as I was being processed into the Foreign Service and I got a call one day and they were offering me a position, so left Oregon and joined the Foreign Service. Q: Where had you gone to undergraduate college? KOTT: St. John's University in New York City, political science major. Q: Why don't you say a little bit more about your Peace Corps experience? You were in a village in India? KOTT: Indeed. Yes. It was eye opening, life changing one might say. It was basically a general community development program, in those days Peace Corps programs were less focused and more general than they eventually grown into. We were specifically supposed to be working in agricultural development, right out of New York City. Had to learn what a cow and a tree was, before I could to that. But anyway, basically, we were there to be change agents, working with government counterparts in areas that were newly brought under irrigation. The Indian government was irrigating at a furious rate back in those days, in the early stages of the “green revolution,” so called. They were introducing the miracle crops: miracle wheat, hybrid corn, hybrid sorghum. I was on the Deccan Plateau in southern India, a sorghum producing area. And they wanted us to help the government efforts to introduce to the farmers the hybrid crops, so as to take better advantage of the newly irrigated fields that were being brought into production, at the great expense to the Indian government of course. Q: You refer to it as “we.” Were there several Peace Corps volunteers working I the same village, doing this kind of work, or were you pretty much by yourself? KOTT: Both. Generally, we were assigned individually to the village, but the group that I came in with; we were trained as a group and was divided into two areas in the state, so that there might have been 12 of us within a 20 mile radius in one part of the state and Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001575 Library of Congress 12 of us in another similar situation. As it turned out, I had been assigned to a city, rather than to a village, and that proved not to be so very productive for a number of reasons, but largely a Peace Corps experience really is one of a village experience, and so after about a year in the city, I wasn't very happy, don't forget I was not being terribly productive there, I moved out to a village where there was another Peace Corps volunteer from my group and a good friend of mine, and worked with him, doing what I earlier described plus other general community development type projects. He helped start a cooperative through a grant from the CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere). That proved to be very productive and lasted a number of years and may still be in existence as far as I know. Introducing things as hybrid chicken and that sort of thing, the usual Peace Corps experience. He left earlier and I stayed behind and remained in the village by myself. Q: India must have had quite an impact on you if you decided to do South Asia graduate work at the University of Oregon. Was it that experience?? KOTT: Yes, absolutely. India is the kind of place, I think most people would agree, you either hate it or you love it. If you can last more then a week in India, you probably love it and fall in love with it. Upon arrival, my only culture shock that I can remember in my whole life, of course it was my first real overseas experience other than student trips to Europe, after about three days got over culture shock and on we went. India is a way of life, it's an existence, Hinduism, even though it is not a completely Hindu country of course, is so over compassing, it's not just a religion, it's a way of being. Obviously if you are with and amongst the people and in a rural setting and participate as most Peace Corps volunteers do, speak a little of the local language, it grows on you. To this day, it still is my first love, even though I never got reassigned back there as a Foreign Service officer, I always wanted to but I didn't. Q: What years were you in India? Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001575 Library of Congress KOTT: The end of 1966 until the beginning of 1969. Effectively just over two years, it sounds like four years but it was just over two years. Q: Because I was in Pakistan in 1965, when there was a war between Pakistan and India, but that war didn't last very long and the next wars did not clear until 1971, which resolved in Bangladesh. So India must have been, it was peaceful time? KOTT: Yes it was relative peace, it was going through, it was just coming out of a great drought and famine that occurred in the mid '60s. After the fact, I learned in the chartered India aircraft, that took our Peace Corps group and another Peace Corps group to India from JFK in New York, was sitting, in the first class compartment, Mrs. Gandhi, Prime Minister of India of the day, who was returning after visiting Lyndon Johnson in Washington, asking for American wheat. And apocryphally Lyndon grabbed the lady by the sari and said, “If you want my wheat you take my Peace Corps volunteers.” That is how we got up to something like 1,400 1,500 Peace Corps volunteers in India when I was there. It was certainly the largest Peace Corps program in the world. Of course I found out later that Mrs. Lillian Carter was in India as a volunteer, the mother of the would be President, in Maharashtra state, not terribly far from where I was. I didn't know her at the time, of course. There were huge numbers of volunteers there. We had four Peace Corps administrative offices around the country: New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Bangalore. My group and others were assigned to Bangalore region, that is how big it was. Q: You told about how you took the Foreign Service exam when you were at the University of Oregon, and would have been more interested if USAID had come with an offer, or some other development organization. KOTT: They did come with an offer, for their refugee relief program in Vietnam, and because my draft status at the time was 1A, I opted to go with AID. I was being processed for a position with AID in Vietnam, in fact I had even gone for my official passport, dip passport of the day. While I was still a student at Eugene, in fact it was my first semester in Interview with Mr. Robert J. Kott http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001575 Library of Congress graduate school when I got a letter or a call from AID, they were dropping my application. Happily, we had on our very small staff at the Institute that I was studying at in Eugene an AID senior officer who was on the sabbatical. Ed Merishulo was his name, and I asked him, “Ed, what's this all about, I thought I was being selected into the Foreign Service for AID and not being dismissed so readily?” He said, “Oh, we are having a RIF (Reduction in Force), and of course the first people we are going to RIF are the applicants.” It's not even a RIF as far as they are concerned, they are just dropping them.