Descriptive Summary | |
Title: Cyrus R. Vance Collection of Dean Rusk Audiovisual Materials | |
Creator: Vance, Cyrus R. (Cyrus Roberts), 1917-2002 | |
Creator: Rusk, Dean, 1909-1994 | |
Creator: Southern Center for International Studies (Atlanta, Ga.) | |
Inclusive Dates: 1987-1989 | |
Language(s): English | |
Extent: 12 item(s) | |
Collection Number: RBRL218CRV | |
Repository: Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies | |
Abstract: The collection consists of eleven commercially-released interviews of Dean Rusk conducted in 1987 by Edwin Newman for the Southern Center for International Studies and one copy of The Seventh Annual Report of the Secretaries of State, 1989: "American Foreign Policy: The Challenges, The Opportunities, The Dangers." In the interviews, Rusk discusses growing up in Georgia, his experiences in the State Department, and his views on the war in Vietnam, the Nuclear Age, and U.S.-Soviet relations throughout the Cold War. The Seventh Annual Report of the Secretaries of State includes a roundtable discussion by former U.S. Secretaries of State on the subjects of East Germany, the Cold War, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, Nuclear Proliferation, and the Tiananmen Square incident in China. |
Dean Rusk was born on February 9, 1909 in Cherokee County, Georgia. He attended Lee Street Elementary and Boys' High School in Atlanta, Georgia. Rusk obtained an A.B. degree from Davidson College, North Carolina in 1931, and a B.S. (Rhodes Scholar) and M.A. in 1933 and 1934 from St. John's, Oxford, England. He returned to the United States to become Associate Professor of Government and Dean of Faculty at Mills College, Oakland, California, from 1934 to 1940 and studied law at the University of California, Berkeley, class of 1940.
Rusk served in the United States Army from 1940 to 1946 in the China-Burma-India theater. At first he served with the Third Infantry Division, then later with the Military Intelligence Service. Rusk was released from duty with the rank of colonel.
After his military career ended, Rusk joined the Department of State from 1947 to 1952, as Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs and for Far Eastern Affairs. From 1952 to 1960 he was president of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Rusk to the office of Secretary of State. He remained in this position until 1969, through the administrations of Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Rusk was in office during the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, when East Germany began constructing the Berlin Wall, and as the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was also Secretary of State during the height of the Vietnam Conflict.
In 1970, Rusk came to the University of Georgia's School of Law as the Samuel H. Sibley Professor of International Law, and he later established the Dean Rusk Center for International and Comparative Law. Rusk served the University of Georgia until his death on December 20, 1994.
Rusk married Virginia Foisle in June, 1937. They had three children together, David Patrick, Richard Geary and Margaret Elizabeth. In 1990, As I Saw It, the book he co-authored with his son, Richard, was published.
Cyrus Roberts Vance was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia on March 27, 1917. He attended Yale University, receiving his B.A. in 1939 and his law degree in 1942. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Vance practiced law at the Wall Street firm of Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett, becoming a respected international lawyer. He entered government service as a Senate committee counsel in 1957. and later served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as secretary of the army (1961-62), deputy secretary of defense (1964-67), and U.S. negotiator to the Paris Peace Conference on the Vietnam War (1968-69). He also served as special envoy to Cyprus (1967) and Korea (1968). As President Carter's secretary of state, Vance opposed the 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran and resigned after the mission failed. He joined William Jennings Bryan as the only Secretaries of State to resign their posts over principle. "I knew I could not honorably remain as secretary of state when I so strongly disagreed with a presidential decision that went against my judgment as to what was best for the country and hostages," Vance later explained. He subsequently served on several diplomatic missions, in particular as head of the United Nations' efforts to negotiate an end to the violence following the dissolution of Yugoslavia (1991-92). At various times Vance also served on the boards of corporations, universities, foundations, and other organizations, and was chairman (1988-1990) of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In 1947, he married Grace Sloane Vance, with whom he had five children. Cyrus Roberts Vance died on January 12, 2002 after a lengthy struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The memoirs of Cyrus Vance are published in Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy (1983). Vance has also written: Common Security : A Blueprint for Survival (1982) and Building the Peace : US Foreign Policy for the Next Decade (Alternatives for the 1980's) (1982). Also of note are Davis S. McLellan's biography of Vance: Cyrus Vance (1985) and former Carter national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's memoirs, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1980 (1983).
Cyrus R. Vance Collection of Dean Rusk Audiovisual Materials includes 12 VHS videocassettes of programs produced by the Southern Center for International Studies. Eleven of the tapes are copies of the interviews Dean Rusk did with Edwin Newman in 1985, and one tape is a copy of the Center's 7th Annual Report of the Secretaries of State, recorded in 1989.
Cyrus R. Vance Collection of Dean Rusk Audiovisual Materials is arranged by format.
Cyrus R. Vance Collection of Dean Rusk Audiovisual Materials, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641.
The videotapes are edited versions of interviews already housed at the Russell Library in unedited form in the Dean Rusk Papers (Rusk AV 95-69 a-m).
Copyright is held by the Southern Center for International Studies, 320 W. Paces Ferry Rd. NW, Atlanta, GA 30305. Requests for duplication or copyright clearance should be submitted in writing to Julia Johnson-White, Vice President/Legal Counsel and Director of Educational Programs.
It is the particular responsibility of the researcher to obtain permission to reproduce material for publication. Persons wishing to reproduce materials in the Russell Library collections should consult the Director. Reproduction or quotation of any item must contain a complete citation to the original.
Finding aid prepared on: 2011.
Thomas J. Schoenbaum Collection of Dean Rusk Files
Dean Rusk Oral History Collection
Parks Rusk Collection of Dean Rusk Papers
William Tapley Bennett, Jr. Papers
Cyrus R. Vance and Grace Sloane Vance Papers, Yale University
Cyrus R. Vance Oral Histories, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas
Dean Rusk Oral Histories, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, Texas
Dean Rusk Personal Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, National Archives and Records Administration, Boston, Massachusetts
Dean Rusk Papers, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York
Dean Rusk Files, Department of State, Washington, DC