John F. Melby: Difference between revisions
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John F. Melby (died December 18, 1992) was a United States diplomat.
Melby was born in Portland, Oregon, and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1934. He received a master's degree and a doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago.[1]
He joined the Foreign Service in 1937 and was assigned in 1943 to the American Embassy in Moscow. In 1945 he was sent to China, where the Nationalist Government was fighting Mao Zedong's army. When the Communists won control of China in 1949, Melby was recalled to Washington. On instructions from his State Department superiors, he produced an analysis of the Communist Revolution in China, an influential study known as the China White Paper. In 1950, he was sent on one of the first American missions to assess the struggle of Communist insurgents against French colonial rule.[1]
In 1944, Melby met the playwright Lillian Hellman, whom President Roosevelt had sent on a cultural good-will mission to Moscow. They began an affair that lasted several years.[2] Hellman was later reputed to have been an erstwhile member of the Communist Party. In the early 1950s, at the height of anti-Communist fervor in the United States, the State Department investigated whether Melby posed a security risk because of his relationship with her, and she testified before the department's Loyalty Security Board on his behalf.
After the State Department dismissed him in 1953, Melby attributed his ouster to his relationship with Ms. Hellman.[3]
From 1956 to 1964, Melby taught at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the director of foreign studies. In 1966, he founded the department of political studies at the University of Guelph and served as its first chairman. He retired in 1978.[1]
He died of a heart attack on December 18, 1992, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. His wife, Roxana Carrier Melby, survived him.[1]
Notes
- ^ a b c d New York Times: Richard Perez-Pena, "John Melby, 79, Who Tied Ouster As a Diplomat to Hellman Affair," December 27, 1992, accessed October 11, 2011
- ^ Newman, Romance, p?. Hellman's relationship with Dashiell Hammett continued during these years.
- ^ Newman. Romance
Sources
John F. Melby, The Mandate of Heaven, a Record of a Civil War, China 1945-49 (Anchor Books, 1971) Robert P. Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (University of North Carolina Press, 1989)