The Foreign Service Journal, September 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2014 75 FSOwho is now in the private sector; and Patricia (Kit), a career FSO presently serving in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs inWashington, D.C. ; grandchildren, Daniel, Kate, Paul, Tim and Annie; and great-grandchildren, Ellie and Camden. n Walter R. Roberts, 97, a retired For- eign Service officer with the United States Information Agency, died on June 29 at his residence inWashington, D.C. Born in Austria on Aug. 26, 1916, Mr. Roberts was a graduate of the Uni- versity of Vienna and earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. A research assistant at Harvard Law School from 1940 to 1942, he joined the Office of War Information in 1943, serving as a researcher, analyst and writer until 1945. After eight years of service with the nascent Voice of America, he was assigned to the State Department’s Austrian desk and then, in 1953, as deputy area direc- tor for Europe in the newly created U.S. Information Agency. In 1955, as a member of the American delegation to the Austrian Treaty Talks, he contributed to the treaty that ended the occupation status of Austria and restored its independence. In 1960, Mr. Roberts was named counselor for public affairs at Embassy Belgrade. During this time he interacted with President Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav revolutionary and communist leader. His experiences in Yugoslavia led him to publish a highly regarded book, Tito, Mihailovic and the Allies, 1941-1945 (Duke University Press Books, 1987). In 1966, he was assigned as diplomat- in-residence at Brown University in Provi- dence, R.I., and in 1967 he was transferred to Geneva to serve as counselor for public affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In 1969, he was appointed deputy associate director of USIA and in 1971 was elevated to the associate director position, then the senior career post in USIA. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1974. After retirement, Mr. Roberts was appointed director of diplomatic studies at Georgetown University’s Center for Strate- gic and International Studies. There he was to serve as executive director of a panel on international information, educational and cultural affairs (also known as the Stanton Panel, after its chairman). However, in 1975, he was called back into government to serve as executive director of the Board for International Broadcasting, which oversaw Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Following his second retirement from the U.S. government in 1985, Mr. Roberts was appointed diplomat-in-residence at The George Washington University and taught a course on “Diplomacy in the Information Age” for the next 10 years. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush appointed him to the U.S. Advisory Com- mission on Public Diplomacy, and Presi- dent Bill Clinton reappointed him in 1994. In 2001, Mr. Roberts co-foundedThe Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and the Public Diplo- macy Council at The George Washington University. In 2005, Mr. Roberts created an endowment in his name for the Institute. Mr. Roberts received the Distinguished Honor Award fromUSIA in 1974 and the Voice of America “Director’s Special Recognition Award” in 2009. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Rela- tions, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs and the American Foreign Service Association. Mr. Roberts was predeceased by his wife, Gisela Katherine. He is survived by three sons, William, Charles and Law- rence; daughters-in-law, Patricia, Valerie and Shavaun; seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. n AFSA Scholarship AFSA.org/Scholar AFSPA AFSPA.org Clements Worldwide clements.com Embassy Risk Management embassyrisk.com The Hirshorn Company hirshorn.com/USFS Inside A U.S. Embassy afsa.org/Inside Senior Living Foundation SLFoundation.org WJD Management wjdpm.com