Joseph D. Duffey, a coal miner’s son and ordained minister whose antiwar marketing campaign for the US Senate from Connecticut in 1970 galvanized a
Joseph D. Duffey, a coal miner’s son and ordained minister whose antiwar marketing campaign for the US Senate from Connecticut in 1970 galvanized a technology of campus liberals, and who later served as a cultural arbiter within the Carter and Clinton administrations and presided over two main universities, died on Feb. 25 at his dwelling in Washington. He was 88.
His dying was confirmed by his son, Michael.
A self-described “hillbilly and a Baptist” from West Virginia, Dr. Duffey had organized Freedom Rides for civil rights within the South and protests towards the Vietnam Struggle earlier than in search of the Senate seat from Connecticut. He misplaced, however his rebel candidacy jolted the Democratic Occasion group and catapulted him into appointive jobs, thanks to 2 different “hillbilly Baptists” who occurred to turn into presidents of the US.
Jimmy Carter named him assistant secretary of state for instructional and cultural affairs in early 1977, and later that yr Dr. Duffey was named chairman of the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities, a publish he held till 1982, into the Reagan years.
In 1993, Mr. Clinton recruited him to be director of the US Info Company, which promotes American coverage overseas. He was its final director as an impartial company; it was absorbed into the State Division in 1999.
Dr. Duffey was chancellor of the College of Massachusetts from 1982 to 1991 and chancellor of American College in Washington from 1991 to 1993.
He entered the political fray after succeeding John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist, as chairman of the liberal advocacy group People for Democratic Motion. In 1970 he was going up towards John M. Bailey’s Connecticut Democratic machine.
Mr. Bailey supported Alphonsus J. Donahue, a rich Stamford businessman, to fill the seat that had been held since 1958 by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, a fellow Democrat who had been censured within the Senate for diverting marketing campaign funds for private use and repudiated by celebration leaders when he sought re-election to a 3rd time period. (His son Christopher Dodd was later elected to the Senate from the state.)
Attracting an array of boldface-name supporters, together with the actor Paul Newman, who had a house in Westport, Conn., Dr. Duffey upset Mr. Donahue and a state legislator to win the nomination.
Mounted two years after the failed progressive presidential candidacy of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy in 1968, Dr. Duffey’s marketing campaign energized campus progressives, together with a younger Invoice Clinton, then a pupil at Yale Regulation Faculty. They embraced Dr. Duffey as an trustworthy dealer who would possibly bridge the hole between disaffected liberal Democrats and blue-collar voters who had switched to the Republican Occasion and helped put Richard M. Nixon within the White Home in 1968.
“At a time when younger individuals have been so desperately hungry for honesty and conviction, he met that second with grace and eloquence,’’ Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a former regulation college classmate of Mr. Clinton’s, mentioned of Dr. Duffey this week.
However Dr. Duffey’s marketing campaign was dealt a setback when Mr. Dodd entered the overall election race that fall as an impartial. Mr. Dodd wound up splitting the Democratic vote, permitting the Republican nominee, Lowell P. Weicker, to slide into workplace with lower than 42 %. (Mr. Dodd died lower than seven months later.)
“Within the fall of 1970, I missed about half of my regulation college lessons attempting to assist get Joe Duffey elected to the Senate,” Mr. Clinton mentioned in an announcement. “There have been so many people who have been drawn to his deep dedication to peace, financial equity, and civil rights. Joe misplaced the election, however he left us all proud, wiser within the methods of politics, and richer in lifelong buddies, together with Joe himself.”
Joseph Daniel Duffey was born on July 1, 1932 in Huntington, W. Va., within the western foothills of the Appalachians. His father, Joseph Ivanhoe Duffey, misplaced a leg in a mining accident and have become a barber. His mom, Ruth (Wilson) Duffey, a telegraph operator, died when Joe was 13.
Raised within the Baptist church and later ordained as a Congregational minister, he earned a bachelor’s diploma from Marshall College in Huntington in 1954; a bachelor of divinity diploma from Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts (now the Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity Faculty) in 1957; a grasp’s from Yale Divinity Faculty in 1963; and a doctorate from what’s now the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut in 1969.
In 1952, Dr. Duffey married Patricia Fortney, whom he had met at a Baptist youth conference; they divorced in 1973. A yr later, he married Anne Wexler, who ran his 1970 marketing campaign, turned an aide to President Carter after which a distinguished Washington political operative and lobbyist; she died in 2009.
Along with his son Michael, from his first marriage, he’s survived by his associate, Marian Burros, a former meals author for The New York Instances; two stepsons, Daniel and David Wexler; two sisters, Ida Ruth Plymale and Patrica Duffey Keesee; and 4 grandchildren.
Dr. Duffey introduced his progressive sensibilities to his job as chairman of the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities below Mr. Carter. He outlined the job to The Instances in 1977 as awarding federal grants to help “disciplines whose perform and function are self‐discovery and the exploration of the human expertise.” And he acknowledged that he had encountered flak for specializing in what he known as “uncared for areas of analysis,” just like the research of ladies and minority teams in America and the historical past of the Center East.
His background as chief administrative officer for the American Affiliation of College Professors from 1974 to 1976 helped pave the way in which for his appointments to the chancellorships of the College of Massachusetts and American College.
As a product of the antiwar motion, Dr. Duffey cautioned towards romanticizing the period, recalling it as a time of deep nationwide division.
However at a reunion of a few of his 1970 marketing campaign volunteers in 1993, after Mr. Clinton had risen to the White Home, he reminded them that whereas it had taken Mr. Clinton’s election to reunite them, they need to maintain quick to their liberal rules and proceed to work for what might convey them collectively once more.
“Taking a look at you, I’m certain there’s one other president right here,” Dr. Duffey mentioned. “And I’m certain we’ll all be collectively once more when she is inaugurated.”