Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR STEPHEN BOSWORTH Interviewed by: Michael Mahoney Initial interview date: February 24, 2003 Copyright 2008 ADST [Note: This interview was not edited by Ambassador Bosworth] Q: This is the 24th of February and we're at Tufts University. This is an interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth. Mr. Ambassador, could you start by telling us a little bit about your background, where you were born and grew up and went to school and how you got interested in the Foreign Service, that sort of thing. BOSWORTH: Sure. I was born in Western Michigan and grew up there on a very small farm. At the time my father was working in a lumberyard in Michigan in Grand Rapids. He subsequently several years later went back to college himself and became a high school teacher, but I spent the first 17 years of my life living on this farm outside of Grand Rapids. I went to high school in a place called Granville, Michigan. Q: Public high school? BOSWORTH: It was a very public high school, not a very good public high school, frankly. It was a decent way to grow up and I guess I learned some habits that have been useful to me later in life like most people who live on small farms. Because I was, well, after Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001521 Library of Congress I graduated from high school, I went to college. I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Q: How did you happen to go there out of Grand Rapids? BOSWORTH: I was a high school football player. My high school football coach had played someplace with a fellow who was the director of the athletic information at Dartmouth. He sent out postcards every year asking all of his friends if they had anyone they thought might be able to play ivy league football who could also be academically admitted to a place like Dartmouth. Without talking to me about it, my coach sent my name in and the next thing I knew I was being flooded with material from Dartmouth and became very captivated with the notion of going to Dartmouth. I had no idea of what it was like. I had never been outside the state of Michigan. Q: Let me back up. What year were you born? BOSWORTH: I was born in 1939. Q: So, this is '39 and so what year would you have started Dartmouth? BOSWORTH: I started at Dartmouth in 1957. I was in the class of 1961. Q: You had never been outside of Michigan? BOSWORTH: Well, I'd actually been to Waterloo, Iowa once to participate in a 4-H Club dairy cattle judging contest. That was my own foray outside the state. So, Dartmouth College was quite a shock to me in many ways, a pleasant shock on the whole, but I had done little in my earlier life to prepare me for it. I graduated, well; I was at Dartmouth obviously for four years. Q: What did you major in? Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001521 Library of Congress BOSWORTH: I ended up majoring in something called international relations only because it was an interdisciplinary major that offered me the prospect of not having to concentrate on any one field. Q: Did you actually play football at Dartmouth? BOSWORTH: I played football one year and discovered that while I liked Dartmouth very much I was not that enamored with college football. I did not play football after my freshman year, but I had a General Motors scholarship at Dartmouth and then as now athletics scholarships are not found at Dartmouth and other Ivy League institutions. So, I was there and could stay even if I didn't want to play football. The international relations major was an interdisciplinary major and I had several professors who were quite influential in shaping my thinking at the time. One of them indicated that he had been in the Foreign Service for a few years right after World War II and told me that he thought it might be a good idea for me to take the Foreign Service exam, which I did. I took the Foreign Service exam and a few weeks later I took the law boards because the other route that I saw as potentially open to me was to go to law school. Q: You had made up your mind you weren't going back to live in Michigan? BOSWORTH: I was not going back to live in Michigan. There was nothing for me in Michigan except my parents who obviously I had remained close to when I went back periodically, but the notion of living in Michigan held no appeal to me. I guess that was one of the things one of the transformations that Dartmouth provided and that had opened my horizons to a degree that going to a small school in Michigan which would probably have been my alternative I never would have done. Q: What did you like about international relations as a field to study? BOSWORTH: I found the notion of being able to connect with other cultures with other political systems. It seemed to me to offer a wider range of interests and activities perhaps Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001521 Library of Congress than most other occupations that I could think of. The law was not something that I was drawn to, but law school quite frankly was another way of temporizing the way I made a decision for a few years as to what I might want to do. It was through this professor who suggested that I take the Foreign Service exam that I first became interested in the Foreign Service. I interviewed with a few companies in my senior year at Dartmouth and I remember after one a rather interesting conversation. One of the interviewers said to me, “You know, you really should not be interviewing with companies. You should be trying to join the government in some capacity.” I think at that time he was right. I took the Foreign Service exam, passed the written. I can still remember driving, I borrowed a friend's car and drove down to Boston to take the orals and in those years the orals were much different than they are now. They were basically an extended two hour conversation with two or three senior FSOs who asked you questions that they thought would demonstrate either the flexibility or the breadth of your knowledge. They would tell you right after you finished whether or not you passed. I finished this oral exam down here in what was Scollay Square, which is now the Federal Center. Q: This was in 1961? BOSWORTH: This was in 1961, the winter of 1961. It probably would have been February or March and after the exam was over they called me back in and said well, you passed, we'll be in touch with you as to how you can actually contemplate joining the Foreign Service. Q: Did you have any idea at that time sort of how much it paid or any of it? BOSWORTH: I had no notion about any of that. I knew that I would probably be living overseas a good deal with my wife in various countries. Q: But it was the life you were interested in. Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001521 Library of Congress BOSWORTH: It was the life and the profession I was interested in. I must say, however, I was subsequently accepted at both Harvard and the University of Michigan law schools. The fact that the Foreign Service was prepared to pay me a salary however small and law schools were not, was at that stage in my life a fairly important factor in my decision. Q: Did you have a strong academic record in college? BOSWORTH: Not terribly strong. I had not done very well my first year. It took me a while to regain my footing after coming out of what was really a mediocre public high school in Michigan. I eventually did quite well particularly in the social sciences and in my major I did quite well. So, it was not that I was Phi Beta Kappa, but I was a good student. Q: So, they said that they would get in touch with you. BOSWORTH: They told me they would get in touch with me. I graduated in June. I had put down a $25 deposit in the University of Michigan Law School which seemed to me at that time like a lot of money. I went back to Michigan. My mother, who was working in the public school system at that time, got me a job for the summer, along with one of my brothers, installing playground equipment for the school playground. I remember working out there in the hot sun thinking to myself this was not exactly what most Dartmouth graduates had in mind as their first job after leaving school. Q: How many siblings did you have? BOSWORTH: I had two brothers, both younger than me. Q: Did they both stay in Michigan? BOSWORTH: No, none of us stayed in Michigan. My younger brother followed me to Dartmouth. He went there the year after I graduated and the middle brother went to the Interview with Ambassador Stephen Bosworth http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001521 Library of Congress University of Michigan and got his Ph.D.