Oct. 23 – 2020 Fall Psi Upsilon Award Celebration

In 2015, he and the late Ambassador Princeton Lyman co-authored a paper for the U.S. Institute of Peace, analyzing the roles and effectiveness of U.S. special envoys in American diplomacy.

From 2004 to 2006, Ambassador Beecroft was a Professor of National Security Strategy at the U.S. National War College in Washington. In 2001-04, he served as Ambassador and Head of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a staff of 800 civilian and military personnel from thirty countries. Earlier (1996-7), he served at U.S. Embassy Sarajevo as Special Envoy for the Bosnian Federation and Chargé d’Affaires. Other diplomatic assignments included: the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels; the SALT TWO U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms negotiations in Geneva; NATO military headquarters (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium; and the U.S. Embassies in Paris, Bonn, Cairo, Ouagadougou and Amman, the latter two as Deputy Chief of Mission. In Washington, he was Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Officer-in-Charge of Federal German Affairs, and nuclear arms control specialist in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He is a recipient of two personal and four group Superior Honor Awards.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Paris, the University of Strasbourg, and the Goethe-Institut in Munich, Amb. Beecroft served in the U.S. Army Reserve (1965-70) as a medical corpsman and Civil Affairs officer. His nonprofessional interests include travel, classical music (listening and performing) and U.S. Civil War history. He and the former Mette Louise Ording Ottesen, Ph.D., have been happily married vagabonds since 1966. As a volunteer and the co-founder of the Family Liaison Office at State, Mette has worked to safeguard and improve the quality of life of Foreign Service employees and their families worldwide. She has received a Superior Honor Award and other State Department citations for her work. Their two grown children, Christopher and Pamela, are also active in international affairs, with a focus on human rights and development.

In March of 1983 Morris was asked by Guy von Dardel of Stockholm, Sweden, half-brother of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, to sue the Soviet Union to force them to release his brother Raoul. This resulted in his authoring a book entitled “Whatever Happened to Raoul Wallenberg” which tells the Wallenberg story of heroic life saving work in Hungary and reports on Morris's pro bono effort in US Federal Court in Washington DC to achieve this rescue. He began the TAKE A BROTHER program of Philadelphia which was committed to saving hundreds of young people from injustice within the justice system. The genius of the program involved matching little boys in trouble with the law to outstanding high school boys in the neighborhood in a mentorship fashion. Wolff partnered with his wife Patricia, going into the public high schools to find these outstanding boys to lead these wayward boys away from the life of crime. The program awarded the high school boys with college scholarships. Wolff explains that in Philadelphia at this time, many young kids were pushed through the justice system without much of a chance to learn, grow, and become future contributing members to society. The innovative program received a Points of Light award from President George H. W. Bush. Morris was the recipient of the 2020 David A.B. Brown, ΕΦ ’66, Distinguished Alumnus Award. Morris currently resides in Florida.