BOOKS
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tivists who fought the lonely fight to
support decolonization and majority
rule. This coffee-table volume consists
of photographs and remembrances
that bring to life the American Committee on Africa, various grassroots
campaigns in support of African liberation organizations, and the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. A veteran activist and scholar himself, co-editor
William Minter has urged researchers
to dig into the story of what academics nowadays term non-state actors.
Tom Shachtman’s inspiring Airlift
to America does exactly that by rendering the dramatic tale of 800
Kenyan students who reached America with scholarships in the lead-up to
independence from 1959 to 1963. A
handful of Americans and Kenyans,
acting privately and often with interference from both the State Department and British colonial officials,
arranged funding, visas and a support
network that made possible the American education of Barack Obama Sr.
and many of the leaders of modern
Kenya.
The airlift became an issue in the
1960 presidential campaign. Sensing
political fallout that would hurt him
among black voters, Vice President
Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate, pressed an unwilling State Department to find a way to
assist the Kenyans. State’s Africa Bureau and powerful European Bureau
opposed upsetting our closest ally,
Britain, which clung to a policy of determining which Kenyans could go to
universities. AF also preferred to
stick with its established links, such as
the African-American Institute, rather
than do business with an operation
that lacked any pedigree.
The Kennedy family foundation
stepped in at the last minute to keep
the program afloat. So by rejecting
Nixon’s proposal, State may have unin-
tentionally contributed to John F.
Kennedy’s narrow electoral victory a
few months later.
Gregory Lawrence Garland is currently a research fellow at the Defense
Intelligence Agency’s National Defense Intelligence College. A career
Foreign Service officer, he has served
with the U.S. Information Agency, the
Board for International Broadcasting
and the State Department in Maputo,
Tijuana, Luanda, Conakry, Warsaw,
Mexico City and Washington, D.C.
The views expressed here are his own.
A Record of
Accomplishment
Negotiating Environment and
Science: An Insider’s View of
International Agreements, from
Driftnets to the Space Station
Richard J. Smith, Resources for the
Future, 2009, $27.50, hardcover,
163 pages.
REVIEWED BY TED WILKINSON
As principal deputy assistant secre-
tary of State for the Bureau of Oceans,
Environment and International Scien-
tific Affairs for an unprecedented nine
years (1985-1994), Richard Smith
presided over as heterogeneous a bu-
reau as any in the U.S. government.
OES work spans the interests of an al-
phabet soup of agencies — EPA,
NASA, NOAA, NSF, NRC, OSTP, the
National Marine Fisheries Service,
etc. — even Defense.
