Douglas Joseph Bennet

A former national political official and the fifteenth president of Wesleyan University, Bennet graduated from Wesleyan in 1959, received a master's degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard. He began his government service in the 1960s as special assistant to U.S. Ambassador to India Chester Bowles. He later served on the staffs of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton, and Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff. He served as staff director of the new Senate Budget Committee from 1974 to 1977 and in 1977 he was appointed assistant secretary of state for Congressional Relations. He was appointed administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, 1979-1981. He was president of the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, 1981-1983. Bennet was the president and CEO of National Public Radio from 1983 to 1993. He returned to the State Department as assistant secretary for International Organization Affairs and then served as President of Wesleyan University from 1995 to 2007. He worked with faculty to clarify and reinforce Wesleyan's liberal arts mission, led a successful capital campaign, which rebuilt large parts of the campus and enjoyed good relations with Middletown, CT.