BOWDOIN COLLEGE

Reunion weekend - June 1988

WILHELM HAAS, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel, member of the Bowdoin Class of 1953 and Bowdoin parent, we honor you today not only as an accomplished diplomat and public servant, but also for an earlier self, who in applying to Bowdoin wrote from Bremen in 1949 that "hatred between nations can be overcome by honesty and international good will." You pledged then to devote yourself to a career in international relations, a promise you have fulfilled as head of the West German Law of the Sea Delegation at the United Nations, as head of the African Bureau in your country's Foreign Office, as Assistant Secretary of State dealing with Latin, African, and Asian Affairs, and now as Ambassador to Israel, one of the diplomatic corps' most sensitive assignments. In your life and work, you have lived the ideal expressed by your own Federal President in his great speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe: you have honored freedom; you have worked for peace; you have served justice; and you have looked truth in the eye. Mr. Ambassador, we welcome you back to campus and declare you, honoris causa, DOCTOR OF LAWS.

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