1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

MILLER: Yes, but the inward looking monastic life of Oxford had been broken by new
forms of communications, mass media, the radio, certainly by the experience of the war,
the immediate recent experience of the war, and the recovery still underway, and students
from the countries of the former colonies and elsewhere. They were very cosmopolitan. It
was the number one university in the world at that time. Yet there was also the sense that
it was declining. That whole sense of an end to an era was very deep in the European
mentality at the time. Americans were looked on as the successors.
Q: When you were in Oxford did you have to make adjustments or to show that you as an
American weren’t a barbarian? I mean, as part of this Oxford world?
MILLER: Yes, there was always the whole sense that the English were testing you –
asking who are you and what do you know, can we ever be friends, and so on. The
ultimate test was whether you were ever welcomed into their homes, which of course did
take place, but the ties really were what we shared as cultures, I would say, and what we
knew we were going to share was a prescient sensitivity. Many of people who were at
Oxford at the same time are very important to me now, still, even in Iran, for example.
My good friend Hossein Mahdavy who is still living in Tehran was at Christ Church
when I was at Magdalen. We saw each other often when I later served in Iran between
1959-1964 and we have been close friends and seen each other ever since.
Q: Were you in the UK during what became known as the Suez crisis?
MILLER: Yes.
Q: That was probably the biggest divide between France and Britain and the United
States that we’ve had. How did you feel about that?
MILLER: Well, the Suez Crisis of 1956 is, of course, complicated, because it was the
Arab-Israeli issue in its rawest form. We discussed these issues at Oxford in depth. At
Oxford I had a friend, an acquaintance, Sara Rothschild, who had one point of view. So
there’s one side of it. And Ronny Dworkin, who is a legal scholar and professor at Yale,
was also a very special friend. It was possible to discuss the Arab-Israeli issue in depth.
There were many Arabs, and Turks, Persians, Pakistanis at Oxford, who were raising the
same questions that are being raised now. The difficult question of is it possible to obtain
a civilized solution, at a university like Oxford, a center of Oriental study, the answer was
quite clear, yes it is possible. That remains my view.
Q: You mentioned you got married. What was the big event with your wife and how did
you meet?
MILLER: She’s from Providence. She went to Lincoln School in Providence and then to
Emma Willard School. Her family is from Providence, living there from the time of
Roger Williams, the very essence of New England. We met at Smith, where she was a
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