Thanks to the generous gift to SAIS by friends of SAIS alumna Betty Lou Hummel, the Betty Lou Hummel Endowed Fund provides support for innovative research and programming initiatives at the Foreign Policy Institute, as well as for the annual Betty Lou Hummel Memorial Lecture.

Betty Lou Firstenberger Hummel (1925-2011) was a member of SAIS’ first graduating class of 1946. Intrepid, curious, and keenly intelligent, Betty Lou would use her training at SAIS during a lifetime of work around the globe. She remained connected to SAIS throughout her life as well, traveling just months before her death to attend a library dedication at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China. Betty Lou first learned about SAIS when she came to Washington on a job hunting trip during the spring semester of her senior year at Vassar, and ended up touring SAIS with a friend who was on the staff. At just 20 years old and with little work experience and the government in retrenchment after World War II, Betty Lou decided that attending  SAIS would give her the practical experience she needed for a career that would give her a chance to “go out and see something of the world.” 

While at SAIS, Betty Lou pursued her interests in contemporary Middle East affairs. She often recalled how much she had enjoyed her SAIS experience. Along with her classes, she learned from her classmates, many of whom had served in World War II. She also remembered the parties on the rooftop of SAIS’s then Florida Avenue location fondly. She would recount how her Arabic classes met at five in the morning when the instructor was free and how much she enjoyed studying under Ambassador George Allen, then head of the State Department’s Middle East Division. It was Allen who would persuade her to begin her career teaching abroad. 

After graduation, at Ambassador Allen’s suggestion, Betty Lou accepted a position teaching at a women’s college in Istanbul, where she would spend three years. She recalled that then, at the age of 21, teaching was the last profession she would have chosen, but she found Allen had given her good advice. She excelled at teaching and it became a lifelong passion.

Betty Lou held other jobs, including conducting research at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and a position at the U.S. Information Agency in the Near East Division, but she would return to teaching. As she put it, she found that, when living abroad, teaching offered the best opportunity “for her to get out beyond the diplomatic community.” Her husband’s career by then had made her part of the diplomatic community in the countries in which she was living.

After marrying diplomat Arthur Hummel, Betty Lou would accompany him to numerous countries. Arthur Hummel served as Ambassador to Burma, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and China. Betty Lou was with her husband in Addis Ababa during the Saturday Night Massacre and the government takeover by the Derg military junta. In 1979, Betty was evacuated from Pakistan after the assault on the American Embassy. Two years later, she would move to Beijing, where her husband served as the second American Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China after normalization.