John Campbell; State Department Expert on Middle East, Eastern Europe

John Campbell, 88, State Department and Council on Foreign Relations expert on the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Campbell was a consultant and advisor to the State Department from 1963 to 1980 and a member of its policy planning council in 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war, and in 1968. He also served on an advisory panel for the State Department’s Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs during the 1960s. In earlier years, he served as a State Department specialist on Eastern Europe from 1942 to 1946 and officer in charge of Balkan affairs and a member of the policy planning staff from 1949 to 1955. As a staff member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations from 1955 to 1978, he provided analyses of world affairs. Campbell was the council’s director of political studies from 1955 to 1962, a senior research fellow from 1962 to 1978, and director of studies from 1977 until his retirement in 1978. A native of New York, he earned three degrees from Harvard. Campbell’s books included “Defense of the Middle East” in 1958, “American Foreign Policy Toward Communist Eastern Europe” in 1965, “Tito’s Separate Road” in 1967, and, with Helen Caruso, “The West and the Middle East” in 1972. His extensive writing earning him an award in 1980 from the American Assn. for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. On July 16 in Cohasset, Mass.