News

Frederick Cox, founder of the Middle East Studies Center and first dean of graduate studies at Portland State, died December 8. He was 91.

Cox, a professor of history, came to Portland State in 1957, just two years after the institution became a college. His “energy and astuteness,” wrote the late Prof. Gordon Dodds in The College That Would Not Die, was instrumental in making the Middle East Studies Center a success.

Through contacts in the federal government, Dr. Cox founded the center in 1960 as the first federally funded undergraduate Middle East Studies Center in the nation. Under Cox’s leadership, the certificate program continued to grow in stature and students, many of whom went on to careers in government, academia, and business.

As dean of graduate studies from 1964 to 1968, Dr. Cox expanded degree offerings from two advanced degrees to 16 master’s degrees and three doctoral programs. At the same time he remained head of the Middle East Studies Center.

Dr. Cox was the first American scholar to work in the Da al-Wassaig (former Abdin Palace Archives) in Cairo. He was the author of numerous articles on the Middle East for professional journals in Egypt, Sudan, England, and the U.S. He also co-edited a two-volume set on The Soviet Union and the Middle East: 1917 - 1985, which was published after his retirement in 1980.