Passing of Arthur Hoffman, co-founder of AGS

Arthur S. Hoffman, co-founder of the American Graduate School in Paris (at the time called American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy), professor and student advisor, passed away in his sleep on March 3, 2011.

Dr. Hoffman was born in Camden, New Jersey, USA on June 22, 1926. He was valedictorian of the 1943 graduating class of Camden High School and, in his senior year, won the State oratorical contest sponsored by the American Legion and continued on as far as the national semifinals. He also played on the high school tennis team, and continued his passion for the game throughout his life.

Art enrolled in Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1943, and then left after his freshman year to enlist in the US Army. After basic training, he was selected for a program in Japanese studies and language at the University of Minnesota. In 1946, he was assigned to be an interpreter in postwar Japan. When his Army duty ended, he returned to Oberlin, received his baccalaureate in political science in 1947, and enrolled in the Master's program in international relations at the (soon to become Johns Hopkins) School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, where he received his M. A. in 1948,

He then went on to the University of Geneva, where he was awarded a Docteur es sciences politiques in 1951. His dissertation on the Marshall Plan in France, focusing on statism, gigantism and monopoly tendencies, was written under the faculty supervision of Professor Wilhelm Roepke, an advisor to Ludwig Erhard on German postwas economic reform policy. By age 25, he was fluent in Japanese, German and French.

In the course of his doctoral research, he met his wife Roberte Anne Piot de Casse, in Paris. They enjoyed 60 years of marriage and had four children, Richard, Alan, and Sidney Hoffman and Elisabeth Jamieson. Richard and Alan, as well as Arthur's younger brother David and son-in-law Neil Jamieson, all attended SAIS in Washington, Bologna or both.

Art worked from 1950 to 1984 with the postwar High Commission for Germany (HICOG), the US State Department, and primarily the United States Information Agency (USIA). The USIA Directors he worked under included Edward R. Murrow, Carl Rowan and John Chancellor. His assignments included Fukuoka, Japan; Prague, Bordeaux, Ankara, Saigon, Paris and Brussels. In most of these postings, he served as Cultural Affairs Officer (or a similar title) for an area of the host country, or Cultural Attache at an American Embassy. By his last Washington assignment in the 1970s, he had reached the highest career position in USIA, Associate Director for Policy and Plans. He retired in 1984 with the rank of Minister-Counselor.

During his career and after his retirement, he always found time for academic pursuits and achievements. In 1965-66, he was given a 1-year assignment to found the Edward R. Murrow School of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, where he created the curriculum, administered a budget, hired faculty and staff, and taught a course. He was a Fellow at the Battelle Research Center in Seattle, and a guest lecturer at many other universities in the US, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Between 1988 and 1996, he was Adjunct Professor in the M. A. programs at the American University of Paris and Schiller International University, also in Paris.

From 1994 through 2000, he was a professor and Director of Studies at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy, which he co-founded along with Professors John Lee and Joseph Tomchak.  In 2000, he spent a semester at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, teaching a survey course on world political history and philosophy on an exchange program that AGS had with University of Miami

Dr. Hoffman published numerous articles and wrote or edited several books, including International Communication and the New Diplomacy (Indiana University Press,1968) and Europe in Transition: Managing Security after the Cold War (Praeger, 1992).