Dr. John Stothoff Badeau, 1903-1995

By Andrew I. Killgore

When former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt John Badeau visited the American Embassy in Baghdad in 1966 he told us of what he termed the "cleverest" thing he had ever written. This was a short telegram sent 35 years earlier from Baghdad, where Badeau had been a teaching missionary, to the northern city of Mosul, where fellow Americans also ran a school for Iraqis. The cable read, "In view circumstances, suggest you hop Liz and skip."

The "circumstances" were an upcoming politically sensitive anniversary in Mosul that some of Badeau's Iraqi friends thought could trigger riots that might endanger the Americans there. In the absence of a telephone connection, a warning cable was decided upon couched in American slang. Badeau thought the Americans in Mosul would understand it, but Iraqis wouldn't. A "Liz" was a "tin-Lizzy," as Model T Fords were colloquially called in 1931. "Skip" meant to leave in a hurry and secretly.

The "only" problem with the cable was that the Mosul Americans had been overseas so long that they were unfamiliar with contemporary American slang. The sensitive anniversary passed without incident, but in the absence of further communication, the Mosul group worried that the puzzling message from Baghdad meant that the Americans there were in some kind of trouble. So, two days after the anniversary, a concerned American from Mosul arrived via "tin Lizzy" in Baghdad to offer whatever help he could to deal with Baghdad's "circumstances." Americans in both cities eventually had a good laugh.

When I first met John Badeau in 1958 at a luncheon party in Ramallah (Palestine), I noticed that he carefully sought the views on Middle East developments of all of the guests, who mostly were Palestinians, with a few representatives of foreign consulates in Jerusalem, including me. When asked after lunch to speak himself, he protested that as president of the Near East Foundation in New York his views might reflect an American bias. After a chorus of disagreement from other guests, he gave a masterly 15-minute overview of the Middle East and U.S. relations with it. The impromptu presentation fully justified Badeau's reputation as an insightful political analyst and superb public speaker.

Badeau was simply too big physically to be self-effacing with any kind of "body language." But he generally found a way to establish friendly rapport by poking gentle verbal fun at himself. His charmingly self-deprecating humor revealed that he was a marvelously witty man of impressive intellect.

Born in Pittsburgh, John Stothoff Badeau graduated in engineering from Union College in Schenectady, New York in 1924. But he early branched off from that field to earn a divinity degree at Rutgers University and later a masters degree in sacred theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York. There he also did graduate work in the Arabic language and Muslim philosophy.

Originally ordained a minister in the Reformed Church in America, he transferred to the Presbyterian Church in 1953. He taught religion and philosophy at the American University in Cairo beginning in 1936. During World War II he served as chief regional specialist in the Office of War Information, predecessor of the present U.S. Information Agency.

Packing the Pews

Retired foreign service officer Lee Dinsmore, who worked for the American Red Cross in Egypt during World War II, vividly remembers John Badeau's reputation as a humorous and a dynamic speaker in those days. Attendance at the Cairo church where Dinsmore worshipped generally was sparse. But on Sundays when John Badeau was to be in the pulpit, the church was always packed.

For 17 years, beginning in 1936, John Badeau was a part of the American University in Cairo, first as a professor, then as dean and finally as president, from 1945 to 1953. During these years he came to be highly regarded by Egyptians and Arabs generally as a person, professor and philosopher. His presence and prestige helped to build AUC as an American cultural legacy in the Middle East that eventually rivaled the older American University of Beirut. In 1953 Badeau left AUC to accept an appointment as president of the Near East Foundation in New York, where he served until President John F. Kennedy appointed him American ambassador to Cairo in 1961.

The appointment was an inspired decision. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was widely popular in the Arab world as one who had overthrown a discredited and corrupt regime, established Egyptian control of the Suez Canal and helped restore Arab pride after centuries of foreign domination. Besides already knowing Nasser personally, John Badeau was perhaps the best known and most highly respected American in the Middle East.

His return to Cairo as his country's emissary to Nasser's Egypt seemed to offer hope for better days in an Arab-U.S. relationship which had been poisoned, then as now, by overwhelming American favoritism for Israel. While still a senator, Kennedy had spoken out for Algeria in its struggle to free itself from France, and his election to the presidency was hailed throughout the Arab world. Relations with Egypt improved perceptibly, and U.S. wheat for Egypt's millions came in such quantities that the bread of those days came to be called "American bread."

But better U.S.-Arab relations were riding for a fall. Jewish nationalists in the American media began to sully Nasser's name as a "Castro-style dictator." President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, and John Badeau left Cairo the next year. Hopes for a sustainable improvement in American-Arab relations began to fade as events gradually led on to the fateful Arab-Israel war of 1967.

Who knows whether that war, and the tragedies that followed in the Middle East, including Israel's ill-considered drive to incorporate the lands seized in 1967 into a greater Israel, might have been avoided if Kennedy had not been assassinated?

Ambassador Badeau was a man full of honors. A professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University from 1964 to 1971, he was also the university's Middle East Institute director. From 1971 to 1974 he taught Middle East history at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where his course on Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser was much sought after.

He also served as president of the Middle East Studies Association and lectured at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, the National War College and the Armed Forces Staff College.

John Badeau was a rare combination of engineer and writer/philosopher. His two well-known books are The Emergence of Modern Egypt, published in 1953, and The American Approach to the Arab World (1967). He also wrote numerous articles about the Middle East.

At the same time he loved to fix things and work with his hands. His daughter, Jeanne Badeau Barnett of McLean, Virginia, who kindly provided the Washington Report with the accompanying photograph of Ambassador Badeau, recalls that he was never happier than when he was dealing with the physical realities of making or repairing objects, and figuring out what made such things work.

John Badeau lived for 92 years. Respected by all who knew him as a truly great American and human being, he was preoccupied until shortly before his own death with the care of his wife, Margaret Louise Hathaway, who predeceased him in 1991. They are survived by their daughter, two sons, Roger Carroll Badeau and Peter Weekes Badeau, a brother, Charles, a sister, Mary Woodruff, and three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.