An Oral History--Lex Rieffel and the Peace Corps

Most people who have spent two years or more as a Peace Corps volunteer say that the experience was "transformational". In my case, I would say it was "foundational" more than "transformational". This is because I joined the Peace Corps as a calculated career move. In 1965, at the end of two years of active duty as an Ensign in the US Navy, I had a choice between joining the Peace Corps for two years or joining a 2-year master's degree program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

When Fletcher agreed to defer my admission for two years, and the Peace Corps agreed to send me to India (the only country I told them I would serve in), the choice was easy and I was soon on my way to India.

Most Peace Corps oral histories focus on the years of service. Mine is different because I found myself deeply involved in Peace Corps policy forty years after my service in India. This part of my oral history is arguably the most important part from an historical perspective. 

My policy interest in the Peace Corps began shortly after joining the Brookings Institution to produce a book on the sovereign debt restructuring process (when countries go bankrupt). In 2003, I was asked to produce an assessment of the Peace Corps from a US policy perspective and it caught the attention of Brookings President Strobe Talbott. 

For the next three years, the work I did in this area took 30-40 percent of my time. It led significantly to: (a) the first ever policy study of international volunteer service programs for Americans beyond the Peace Corps; (b) a national working group meeting on international volunteer service at Brookings in mid-2006, for which a pep talk was delivered by Colin Powell; and (b) the formation of the Building Bridges Coalition, an umbrella organization for the many US-based private sector and public sector organizations that were sending 50-100,000 Americans overseas every year for volunteer service.

Highlights of the interview:

--The special relationship of my Peace Corps group, India XVI, with Harris Wofford, the deputy director of the Peace Corps agency.

--How I had nothing to show for my work related to the mission of my group, which was to promote modern poultry-keeping in India.

--An extraordinary trip to Chandigarh, capital of Punjab, with the daughter of Charlotte Perriand who collaborated with Le Corbusier in designing the interiors of the new capital.

--Noteworthy trips to visit a childhood friend serving in the Peace Corps in Nepal and to be Best Man at the wedding of two volunteers in my group in Udaipur, Rajasthan, with the help of the Maharana's elephant.

--The month I spent in Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi to recover from triple pneumonia, saved by Peace Corps doctor Harris Berman

This oral history omits one crucial part of my Peace Corps experience. As I was finishing my time in India, I wrote to the Fletcher School to find out when I needed to make my first tuition payment and when I needed to arrive on campus. (Remember this was before the internet when communication between India and the USA was by postal air mail letters or Western Union telegrams.) The response I got was that I would have to re-apply and the deadline had passed for entering in the 1967-68 academic year. My savior this time was Felix Knauth, head of the Peace Corps' Northern Region office in India. I mentioned the problem to him and luckily he was about to fly back to Boston to look after his father. He agreed to take up my case with the Fletcher admissions office and two weeks later I was welcomed as a member of the Class of 1968.

The oral history can be found on this webpage: https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/ark:/16417/xt71j3px8lhq9

To see the 56-minute video-recorded online interview, click on the "Play Interview" button.f

The photo at the beginning of this post shows me (far left in white sweater) in front of the unit (one of five in a row) that I lived in on the outskirts of Ghaziabad, U.P.