Full Name Miriam Camp Spouse(s) W. A. Camps | Name Miriam Camp | |
Born 1916 Lynn, Massachusetts Died 1994
Cambridgeshire, UK Alma mater Mount Holyoke College, Bryn Mawr Contributions Marshall Plan, European co-operation Awards Fellow of Wolfson College | ||
Miriam Camp (1916–1994) was an economist, author and State Department official.
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Family life and education
Miriam Camp was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1916, the daughter of Professor Burton Howard Camp and Rachel Caroline Rice. Her maternal grandparents were the Reverend Charles Francis Rice and Miriam Owen Jacobs. She was educated at Mount Holyoke College (graduated 1937) and Bryn Mawr College (graduated with a Master's degree in 1938).
In 1954, she married the classicist William Camps.
She was awarded an honorary degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1959 and became a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
She died of lung cancer in Cambridgeshire on December 30, 1994.
Career
She joined the United States Department of State during World War II and subsequently worked in the Board of Economic Warfare at the U.S. Embassy in London, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs, the Policy Planning Staff and the Bureau of European Affairs. She played a major role in the development and implementation of the Marshall Plan. She said of herself, "There were many fathers of the OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation ) but there was only one mother". She left the State Department in 1954 following her marriage and began writing a series of books on European economic co-operation and its relationship with the US. She put forward the view that Britain had made a mistake in delaying its entry into the EEC for so long. However, she later opposed the increasing power of the European Parliament.
She returned to the State Department in 1961, initially as a consultant and subsequently had several roles in the office of the Secretary of State. She was the first woman to be vice chair of the U.S. State Department's Planning Council. She continued to take an interest in issues surrounding economic growth and was a faculty member on session 188 of the Salzburg Global Seminar - New Perspectives for Long Term Growth.