Former Secretary of State Colin Powell sworn in Charles A. Ray as U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia in 2002. Ray’s wife, Myung, attended the service. Photo: Courtesy of the State Department

During his 20-plus year career in the U.S. Department of State, Charles A. Ray has talked to kings, presidents, soldiers and human rights activists. Ray was U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia from 2002 to 2005, but he now serves as diplomat in residence at the University of Houston —speaking to students about foreign service. Ray is the second person to hold the position on campus.

A native of Center, Texas, Ray served in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1982 with tours around the world, including wartime service in Vietnam. After retiring from the Army in 1982, he joined the State Department, where he held several positions such as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He also worked in the U.S. Consulate General Office in Guangzhou, China, and was the first U.S. Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Ray spoke about his experiences:

Q  What are your responsibilities at UH?
A   Primarily, I identify and recruit students and others who might be interested in careers in the U.S. foreign service or the State Department. I also inform students of the internships and other educational programs we offer. Another key element is community outreach. I work with secondary school systems, civic organizations and other groups to inform communities about foreign service. Here on campus, several professors have invited me to speak to their students.

Q  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, you served in the Army in Vietnam. What were your duties there?
A   I worked as a staff officer in Saigon.

Q  You served as the U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia and as U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China.       What was it like for an African-American diplomat in Asia, in China?
A   During the four and a half years I served in China, the largest number of African-American foreign service officers there at any one time was three. When I started 20-plus years ago, there was a tendency to assign African-Americans to positions in Africa, certain European countries, some Latin American posts and a few Middle Eastern countries. Very few African-Americans looked at Asia for assignments.

I was the first African-American diplomat to penetrate certain parts of northeast China. I was the point man for the U.S. government in areas where people hadn’t seen an American since World War II. In 1985, China’s mind was somewhere back in the 1940s and 1950s as far as the world was concerned. For example, I spoke to a class of about 1,000 university students about life in the United States, circa 1985. After class, one student told me, ‘You can’t be American. In America, they don’t let people of your color do what you’re doing.’

So, it was fascinating to be able to go to these places and actually teach people who had this distorted view about the United States. Their view was if you’re American then you’re of European descent. If you’re dark, then you are either of African or Polynesian descent, and, therefore, you’re from the Third World. That view is less so now with the advent of CNN and the iPOD.

But back then, the Chinese didn’t know what to make of me. Once, I went to a train station and asked for a ticket. I spoke Chinese, and the lady sold me a ticket. I was just about to get on the train when a sharp-eyed security guard recognized that I wasn’t Chinese. So, he pulled me aside because that was during the time China placed restrictions on where Americans could go and how they could travel. I don’t know whatever happened to the lady who sold me the ticket, but I don’t think she received a commendation for that.

Q  What are some of your accomplishments during your tenure in the State Department?
A   When I was in Sierra Leone in West Africa as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy, it was felt that holding elections there would be impossible. This was from 1993 to 1996. At that time, there was a military government in power, rabid poverty, a rebel war and many internally displaced people. A few of us — some British, Germans and some in the Nigerian embassy and the U.N. — didn’t buy that. We felt that if we work with them, give them encouragement and provide them with resources that they would hold elections, and they did. The nation actually had its first democratic presidential election in 1996.

We also created the women’s movement. We watched thousands of Sierra Leone women, some of whom were illiterate, take to the streets. They ran polling places; they volunteered to count votes. They literally browbeat the men in that county into doing the right thing.

In Cambodia, the United States and other nations were able to talk that government into destroying its entire arsenal of man-portable, ground-to-air missiles. The fear was that those missiles would fall into the wrong hands. Cambodia is the only Asian county to have surrendered those weapons.

Q  What has been the response from faculty and students to your recruiting effort?
A   Acceptance has been growing. I find among students here an interest in the world outside. They have not been offered a lot of information about international affairs by the news media, so many of these kids don’t have a clue about the State Department or foreign service. The challenge is to make it relevant to them.

Q  What is your advice to UH students and others interested in pursuing a career in the foreign service?
A   Learn about the world and maintain a curiosity about it. Don’t keep the view that what you have is all you need. The world is smaller than you think. Americans really need to get know the world better. We’re the rich kid on the block. We can’t continue to go around with an attitude that we don’t need the rest of the world, that’s not good for us.

The U.S. image internationally has taken a nose dive in the last few years. All of the sympathy we received after 9/11 has been lost, and, according to some surveys, even the Canadians are liking us less. Part of that is because we don’t bother to learn about the world. That’s not healthy because we are dependent on other countries, whether it’s for oil or cheap shoes and clothes. If the world decides to cut us off, we couldn’t survive.

Q   In your opinion, what is the role of a university in terms of international relations?
A   A Universities should develop contacts with foreign students and academics and educate their communities about the world around them and the world outside this country. The government is responsible for national defense and foreign policy, but every American is responsible for communication and outreach to the rest of the world. We need to be capable of helping other nations understand this complicated country of ours.

Editor’s note: Ray has received the State Department’s Superior and Meritorious Honor awards, the American Citizen’s Abroad’s Thomas Jefferson Award for outstanding support to the overseas American community, two Bronze Star medals from the Army and the Armed Forces’ Humanitarian Service Award.