Richard H. Nolte, Middle East Expert, 86

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Middle East Expert Richard H. Nolte

By Joe Holley, Washington Post Staff Writer

Richard H. Nolte, 86, the second executive director of the Institute
of Current World Affairs and a Middle East expert who was appointed
ambassador to the United Arab Republic (Egypt) but never got to serve,
died November 22 [2007] at Kendal at Hanover, a retirement community
in Hanover, New Hampshire. He had complications of a stroke.

Mr. Nolte's tenure as ambassador was "one of the shortest and most
hectic diplomatic careers on record," The Washington Post reported
Sept. 9, 1967. President Lyndon Johnson named him to the post because
of his Middle East expertise, but the Arab-Israeli War broke out June
5, 1967, two hours before he was to present his credentials to
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Mr. Nolte spent about a week in
Cairo [Egypt] helping arrange passage for Americans out of Egypt and
then headed home himself.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War impeded Richard H. Nolte's nomination as
ambassador to Egypt. (Courtesy Of The Institute Of Cur - Courtesy Of
The Institute Of Cur)

According to his brother, Charles Nolte, Mr. Nolte became persona non
grata in Egypt when he used the words "a factual lie" in response to
Nasser's charges that U.S. pilots were flying sorties in support of
the Israeli air force.

According to Peter Bird Martin, Mr. Nolte's successor at the Institute
of Current World Affairs, Mr. Nolte expected to receive another
ambassadorship but ran afoul of Secretary of State Dean Rusk for being
too much of an Arabist.

Mr. Nolte was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and received an undergraduate
degree in European history from Yale University. He was a Navy aviator
from 1943 to 1945 and returned to Yale to complete a master's degree
in international relations in 1947. He attended Oxford University as a
Rhodes scholar, majoring in Arabic, Arab history and Muslim law.

Mr. Nolte and his wife lived in Beirut from 1951 to 1957 on a
fellowship from the Washington-based Institute of World Affairs. He
also taught at Dartmouth College in the late 1950s and served as a
Middle East associate of the American Universities Field Staff.

From 1959 to 1978, he was executive director of the Institute of
Current World Affairs. Founded in 1925 by Walter Rogers, the
organization grants long-term fellowships for study and training
abroad, with the idea of fostering informed world citizens.

"He took something of a more experimental approach," said Steven
Butler, current director of the institute. Butler noted that Mr. Nolte
granted fellowships not just to scholars, journalists and diplomats
but to such nontraditional applicants as the Pulitzer Prize-winning
composer Roger Reynolds and diet expert Andrew Weil, who studied the
effects of mushrooms on the human brain in Latin America. "He did
choose brilliant people, but it was controversial," Butler said.

Nolte appointed the first female fellow, Barbara Bright, a journalist
who studied in Germany. He offered a fellowship to singer-songwriter
and satirist Tom Lehrer, but Lehrer turned it down.

In May 2004, Mr. Nolte joined a group of 16 former U.S. diplomats who
wrote an open letter to President Bush charging that the
administration's Middle East policy was placing U.S. diplomats,
civilians and the military "in an untenable and even dangerous
position." The signatories urged the president to support negotiations
between Palestinians and Israelis, "with the United States serving as
a truly honest broker."

Mr. Nolte was a past president and board member of the Near East
Foundation; a member of the World Academy of Art and Science, the
Arctic Institute of North America, the National Geographic Society and
the Council on Foreign Relations; and a former executive director of
the Alicia Patterson Foundation. After his wife lost her ability to
speak because of a stroke, he became a board member of the National
Aphasia Association.

Survivors include his wife of 64 years, Jeanne McQuarrie Nolte of
Hanover; four sons, Charles M. Nolte of Fairfield, Conn., Douglas
Nolte of San Francisco [California], Jameson Nolte of Denver
[Colorado] and Roger Nolte of Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania; a brother;
two sisters; and nine grandchildren.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112702493.html