Robert V. Keeley
| Robert V. Keeley | |
|---|---|
| United States Ambassador to Mauritius | |
|
In office June 23, 1976 – September 17, 1978 |
|
| President |
Gerald Ford Jimmy Carter |
| Preceded by | Philip W. Manhard |
| Succeeded by | Samuel Rhea Gammon III |
| United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe | |
|
In office May 23, 1980 – February 20, 1984 |
|
| President |
Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | none |
| Succeeded by | David Charles Miller, Jr. |
| United States Ambassador to Greece | |
|
In office 1985–1989 |
|
| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | Monteagle Stearns |
| Succeeded by | Michael G. Sotirhos |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Robert Vossler Keeley September 4, 1929 Beirut, French Lebanon |
| Died | January 9, 2015 (aged 85) Washington, D.C., United States |
| Spouse(s) | Louise Benedict Schoonmaker |
| Children | 2; Michal, Chris |
| Profession | Diplomat |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Coast Guard |
| Years of service | 1953–55 |
Robert Vossler Keeley (September 4, 1929 – January 9, 2015) had a 34-year career in the Foreign Service of the United States, from 1956 to 1989. He served three times as Ambassador: to Greece (1985–89), Zimbabwe (1980–84), and Mauritius (1976–78). In 1978–80 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, in charge of southern and eastern Africa.
Earlier in his career he had assignments as Deputy Chief of Mission in Cambodia (1974–75) and Uganda (1971–73), and as Deputy Director of the Interagency Task Force for the Indochina Refugees (1975–76). His other foreign postings were as Political Officer in Jordan, Mali, and Greece. In Washington he served as Congo (Zaire) desk officer, and as alternate director for East Africa. At his retirement in 1989 Keeley held the rank of Career Minister.
The same year he received the Christian Herter Award from the American Foreign Service Association for "extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage, and creative dissent." At other stages in his career he earned the Superior Honor Award (for Cambodia), a Presidential Citation (for the Refugee Task Force), and a Presidential Distinguished Service Award (for Zimbabwe). In 1985 he was elected President of the American Foreign Service Association.
From November 1990 to January 1995 Ambassador Keeley served as President of the Middle East Institute in Washington, a private, non-profit educational and cultural institution founded in 1946 to foster greater understanding in the United States of the countries of the Middle East region from Morocco to Central Asia.
Keeley was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1929, where his late father, American diplomat James Hugh Keeley, Jr., was serving as the American Consul. Keeley was educated in Canada, Greece, Belgium, and the United States. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1951, with a major in English literature under the Special Program in the Humanities. His senior thesis was a novel with a critical preface, the first such "creative writing" undergraduate dissertation authorized. His brother Edmund Keeley also graduated from Princeton. Robert continued with graduate work at Princeton in English, and later, while in the Foreign Service, he held graduate fellowships at Stanford and at Princeton in public and international affairs. He did his military service in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Korean War (1953–55) as commanding officer of an 83-foot patrol boat.
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