The Foreign Service Journal, September 2014

28 SEPTEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2014 winner of AFSA’s Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award, talks about his Foreign Service career and pioneering work creating American diplomacy’s oral history program. BY SHAWN DORMAN FOCUS AFSA HONORS DISSENT AND PERFORMANCE TURNING THE TABLES: An Interviewwith StuKennedy O n June 18, at this year’s awards ceremony, AFSA conferred its Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award on Charles Stuart Kennedy, in recognition of his distinguished Foreign Service career and life- time of public service. The previous recipients of this prestigious award are U. Alexis Johnson, Frank Carlucci, George H.W. Bush, Lawrence Eagleburger, Cyrus Vance, David Newsom, Lee Hamilton, Thomas Pickering, George Shultz, Rich- ard Parker, Richard Lugar, Morton Abramowitz, Joan Clark, Tom Boyatt, Sam Nunn, Bruce Laingen, Rozanne Ridgway, William Lacy Swing and George Landau. A career officer in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1955 to 1985, Charles Stuart “Stu” Kennedy retired after a distinguished consular career with the rank of minister counselor. Mr. Kennedy was consul general in Naples, Seoul, Athens and Saigon, and also served in Frankfurt, Dhahran, Belgrade and Washington, D.C. Throughout his career, he set a high standard for creatively managing and responding to the growing need for protection of, and services for, American citizens, and for managing U.S. visa programs and processes. In 1986, after retiring from the Foreign Service, Mr. Kennedy became managing director of The George Washington University’s Foreign Service History Center. There he created the Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection and began recording the insights and expe- riences of American diplomats. The programmoved to George- town University and then, in 1988, to the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training, where he serves as its director. In that capacity, Mr. Kennedy has personally interviewed more than 1,000 retired American diplomats, some of whose careers date back to the 1920s. The ADST Oral History Collection now includes more than 2,000 entries, which are posted on the Library of Congress website, as well as at ADST’s website. The collection is a rich and essential resource for authors, scholars and journalists. Mr. Kennedy is the author of The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service, 1776-1914 (Praeger, 1990). He is the co-author, with William D. Morgan, of The U.S. Consul at Work (Praeger, 1991) and American Diplomats: The Foreign Shawn Dorman is the editor of The Foreign Service Journal .