Spiro, Herbert J.

Herbert John Spiro (September 7, 1924 – April 6, 2010) was an American political scientist and diplomat. Born in Hamburg, Germany, where he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, he and his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution. He served with the United States Army in World War II. His training at Camp Ritchie places him among the list of over 20,000 Ritchie Boys. Afterwards received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. The author of thirteen books on politics and government, he taught at Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania. During the Ford administration, he served as United States Ambassador to Cameroon and to Equatorial Guinea, though the latter country declared him persona non grata. He later returned to academia as a professor at the Free University of Berlin. In the early 1990s, he ran for state and then national office as a Republican from Texas, but was not elected.