Gregory, Bruce
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project BRUCE GREGORY Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: January 5, 2006 Copyright 2015 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Rhode Island Barrington College, American University USIA’s Historical Office 1967-1970 Research on USIA’s pre-WWII origins Monograph on US international broadcasting USIA 1970-1978 Book programs Speaker programs Young Officers Policy Panel AFGE Local 1812 Thomas Legal Defense Fund Foreign Affairs Specialist lawsuit, AFGE v. Keogh Selection out due process lawsuit, Lindsey v. Kissinger E.O. 11636, FS employee-management system Foreign Service representation election in USIA Collective bargaining in USIA Dante Fascell, hearings on Stanton Panel report Congressional Fellowship, Mo Udall, Carl Levin 1978-1979 Udall re-election campaign Panama Canal Treaty implementing legislation Detail to USIS New Delhi US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy 1980-1998 Carter administration, Olin Robison US International Communication Agency Reagan administration, Edwin J. Feulner Annual reports Reports on summit diplomacy, Soviet Union, China Report on public diplomacy and terrorism 1 USIA Director Charles Z. Wick Peter Galbraith’s interest in the Commission George H. W. Bush administration, Tom Korologos Commission opposition to TV Marti Views on US broadcasting after the Cold War Commission opposition to Radio Free Asia Clinton administration, Lewis Manilow, Harold Pachios Senator Jesse Helms and foreign affairs consolidation Vice President Al Gore and Elaine Kamarck Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Broadcasting Board of Governors Ambassador Thomas Pickering’s “corporate board” plan USIA’s merger with the State Department Post-Cold War public diplomacy National War College 1998-2001 The military and public diplomacy Professional education, NWC curriculum State Department’s post-9/11 public diplomacy task force 2001 George Washington University 2002 Adjunct faculty Public Diplomacy Institute INTERVIEW Q: Today is the 5th of January 2006. This is interview with Bruce Gregory, and this is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. I take it you go by Bruce? GREGORY: Yes. Q: Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born? GREGORY: Providence, Rhode Island in November 1941. Q: Let’s take your father’s side first. Where did the Gregorys come from way back and how did they get to Rhode Island? GREGORY: My father, Carlton Gregory, hailed from Rockland, Maine. After high school, he attended Providence Bible Institute in Rhode Island and Gordon Divinity 2 School in Massachusetts. He began his career as an ordained Protestant minister, but after a few years he decided teaching philosophy was his calling. He went to Brown University for his BA degree. He received his MA from Harvard, and eventually earned his PhD in philosophy at Brown. He then taught philosophy for the rest of his life at Barrington College, a small liberal arts college in Rhode Island. Q: OK, let’s talk about grandfather Gregory and beyond. Do you know anything about the older side of the family? GREGORY: One of the things I hope to do in life is to pursue this further. There are a lot of Gregorys of Scottish descent in the U.S. and many are on the coast of Maine. My grandfather raised chickens and also sold grain to other poultry farmers in the area. The only thing I know beyond that is we are descendents of Captain Hanson Gregory, a 19th century sea captain from Rockland who sailed ships in the China trade. We are also descendents of the MacGregor clan in Scotland. My mother has done some research but my encounter with all this is yet to come. Q: Did you ever get from your father how he went from being the son of a chicken farmer to a PhD? GREGORY: I can only tell you it was his inclination as he began to think about theology and the role of religion in society. He did go into the Ministry at first and… Q: What ministry was that? GREGORY: He was an ordained Baptist minister. He had small pastorates in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut for a few years in the 1940s, but he began his career as a philosopher and teacher in the 1950s. He was an excellent teacher, and he found the academic life more suitable to his talents and interests. He also evolved politically from a fairly conservative Maine coast tradition to holding centrist and left of center political and social views as an adult. He left Maine a Republican, but he became a Democrat at some point while I was growing up. He was not active in partisan politics, but he enjoyed weaving political and social issues into his courses – and also into family dinner conversations. Q: Was there any particular philosophical cast or not? GREGORY: My father’s primary interest was in philosophy of religion. He wrote his PhD dissertation on Paul Tillich’s use of language. He taught courses on philosophy of religion, introduction to philosophy, history of philosophy, a seminar course on Karl Marx and Lenin, and a course on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Q: What college was he teaching at? GREGORY: He chaired the philosophy department at Barrington College, a small college that no longer exists. It was where I went to college. My sister, brother and I all 3 attended with free tuition because he was on the faculty. He taught there for a little over thirty years. He retired in 1984 and died the following year. The college had recently merged with Gordon College, which is a little north of Boston. They were both liberal arts colleges that had a similar non-denominational religious perspective. Q: Well how about on your mother’s side? GREGORY: My mother’s family was originally from New Hampshire. They moved to Rockland, Maine, where my mother and father went to the same high school. They married shortly after they graduated. My grandfather on her side had various jobs in retail sales. Most of his life he was the district supervisor for a chain of First National grocery stores on the coast of Maine. Q: Did your mother go on to college or not? GREGORY: No, she did not. She should have, and in a later generation I’m confident she would have. After my siblings and I left home, she trained to be a licensed practical nurse and worked for a few years in medical care facilities in Rhode Island. Q: Absolutely, I mean this is very much the pattern – the fact that your father went on to college. Many of the people I interview still, we are talking about a generation where often the fathers of people who are now involved in foreign affairs did not have a college degree nor did the mothers. I suspect today a junior Foreign Service officer; junior government worker in the executive branch would come from two college graduates possibly both with master’s degrees or more. It is different… GREGORY: It’s very different. Q: What was it like growing up as a kid in Rhode Island? GREGORY: We lived in Barrington, Rhode Island, which is a small, reasonably affluent suburban town south of Providence on Narragansett Bay. It is where Barrington College was located. There was nothing remarkable about growing up in Barrington. It was a great place to grow up. I have good memories of the town and in recent years have attended several high school reunions. Q: In school, let’s take sort of elementary school first. How did you take to school and were there some subjects you liked and other you didn’t like as much? GREGORY: I enjoyed history and civics courses as they called them in those days. I had less interest and not much aptitude for math and the natural sciences. Q: Was the school at that point pretty much white Protestant or ethnically mixed or what? 4 GREGORY: It was mixed. Rhode Island has a heavy Italian and Portuguese ethnic base. A sizable percentage of the high school students in Barrington were Italian Catholics. The rest were white Protestants. One memory was that our high school did not have valedictorians. Instead, they selected two students to write short essays on topics of their choosing, which they would read at graduation. The English teacher would look them over and approve them for delivery at the graduation ceremonies. I was fortunate to be selected as one of the essayists. I had recently read one of my father’s books, The Loyalty of Free Men by Alan Barth, a journalist with an interest in civil liberties. It was a strong critique of Senator Joseph McCarthy. I was struck by the logic of Barth’s argument and drew from it extensively in my essay. I recall the English teacher calling me in after reading it. He said something like, “Bruce, this is a good essay, you should be proud of it. But we think you ought to write on another subject.” He offered no explanation that I can recall. I said, “OK” and wrote an essay on the value of reading. I don’t think either essay was very good. It was only years later that I reflected on why teachers in a small suburban town were concerned about a student essay on the McCarthy era?” This would have been 1959 and… Q: I mean he was dead and … GREGORY: Yes, he was. Nevertheless my first essay was not permitted for the graduation ceremony. Q: How about life at home? Did you peel the philosophical onion at home? Did you have brothers and sisters? GREGORY: I have a brother who is six years younger and a sister who is a year and a half younger.