Hart, Parker Thompson, 1910-1997

Dates

• Existence: 1910 - 1997

Biography

Parker Thompson Hart was born on September 28, 1910 in Medford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1933, received his MA degree from Harvard in 1935, and earned a diploma from the Graduate Institute of International Studies on Geneva in 1936. He was commissioned in the Foreign Service in 1938, and worked his way up through the ranks from Vice Consul in Vienna, where he witnessed Hitler's Anschluss in 1939, to Career Minister in 1961. Hart became an expert in Middle Eastern affairs, spending a lot of time in the region. In 1944, he was chosen to open the first consulate in Saudi Arabia whose Consul General he became in 1949. In 1955, Hart was named Deputy Chief of mission and American Councilor on Cairo, Egypt, where he remained until being appointed Consul General to Damascus, Syria in 1958.

Between field assignments, Hart gained experience in diplomacy at home in the Sate Department where he worked in the Division of Foreign Service Planning (1947-1949), directed the Office of Near Eastern Affairs (1952-1955), was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and South Asia Affairs (1958-1961), and Assistant Secretary of State for the same from 1968-1969. Hart finished his career as Director of the Foreign Service Institute, retiring in September 1969. Hart was a popular speaker, editor of the "America and the Middle East" and author of "Two NATO Allies on the Threshold of War: Cyprus, A Firsthand Account of Crisis Management, 1965-1968" (1990) and "Saudi Arabia and the United States: Birth of a Security Partnership" (1998). Hart died on October 15, 1997.

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