John D. Stempel ’60

John barely evaded the violent seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Called home to Washington just in time, he later published Inside the Iranian Revolution to tell the whole, fraught story.

After his youth in Bloomington, Ind., John set his course toward a diplomatic career at the Woodrow Wilson School. He ran cross country for three years, dined at Cloister Inn, and joined Whig-Clio and Navy ROTC. He then served two years on a destroyer in the Pacific, including a year training the nascent Vietnamese navy.

John earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 and 1965 and began his State career with assignments in several African countries and intervals in the U.S. before serving in Iran from 1975 to 1979. Back home, John served in his “dream job” as director of the State Department Operations Center before retiring in 1989.

He became professor and then director of the School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, until 2013. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a frequent lecturer at Oxford University, he applied his keen wit to his annual and amusing, but frank, “State of the World” talk in Lexington.

John died Jan. 8, 2025. He is survived by his second wife, Susan; three daughters; five grandchildren; and their families. The class sends sympathy to all.