Raymond A. Hare

Raymond Arthur Hare (April 3, 1901 – February 9, 1994) was a United States diplomat, who was Director General of the United States Foreign Service from 1954 to 1956 and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs from 1965 to 1966.

Raymond A. Hare was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia on April 3, 1901 and raised in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. He was educated at Grinnell College, receiving a B.A. in 1924. After college, the president of Grinnell offered Hare a position at Robert College in Istanbul and Hare worked as an instructor at Robert College from 1924 to 1926. During his time in Istanbul, he developed a lifelong fascination with Islamic architecture and began a collection of notes and photographs that he later donated to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the end of his career. He spent 1926-27 working at the American Chamber of Commerce for the Levant and liaising with the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul.

Impressed with Hare, the consulate offered him a position in their commercial section, so in 1927, Hare traveled to Washington, D.C. to sit for the United States Foreign Service exam, and after passing, returned to work in the consulate in Istanbul. In 1931, he became one of a select group of Foreign Service Officers sent to study at the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes in Paris to study the Arabic language. Hare later became one of the few American diplomats of his era with a working knowledge of Arabic. After completing his Arabic studies, he was posted in Beirut 1932-33 and in Tehran 1933-39.

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