Dean Rusk

U.S. Secretary of State (1961-1969)

David "Dean" Rusk (1909-1994) was born in Cherokee County, Georgia. After graduating from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1931, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, earning his B.S. at St. John's College, Oxford in 1933. The following year he earned his M.A. and went to Mills College where he worked until 1940 in the capacities of Associate Professor of Government and Dean of the Faculty. In 1940, he entered the United States Army, serving for six years. Following his military service, Rusk first entered the political sphere as the chief of the U.S. State Department's Division of International Security Affairs. Between 1946 and 1952 he held the following appointive positions: Special Assistant to the Secretary of War from 1946 to 1947; Director of the U.S. State Department's Office of United Nations Affairs; Deputy Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1950; and Assistant Secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs from 1950 to 1951. During the Eisenhower administration, Rusk left politics and became president of the Rockefeller Foundation. When Kennedy was elected president, Rusk reentered public life as Secretary of State, a position he held throughout the entire Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Following Nixon's inauguration in 1969 Rusk returned to academia, teaching international law at the Law School of the University of Georgia from 1970 until his death in 1994.