René Maheu

René Gabriel Eugene Maheu (March 28, 1905 – December 19, 1975) was a French professor of philosophy and the sixth Director-General of UNESCO. He was a close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.^[1]

Maheu in 1962

He was head of the French Information Office in London (1936–1939) and after teaching in Morocco (1940–1942) during World War II, he occupied a managerial post in the France-Afrique press agency in Algiers, before joining the Executive Office of the Resident-General in Rabat. In 1946 he entered UNESCO as Chief, Division of Free Flow of Information. In 1949 Jaime Torres Bodet appointed him Director of his Executive Office. In 1954 he became Assistant Director-General and was UNESCO's representative at UN Headquarters from 1955 to 1958. He was promoted to Deputy Director-General in 1959, Acting Director-General in 1961, and in 1962–1974 Director-General, for two successive mandates.^[2][3]

References

1. MacDonald, Marylea (1996). "Sartre, the Philosopher, and Beauvoir, the Thinker: The Offstage Production". Dalhousie French Studies. 37: 153–160. JSTOR 40837131.
2. Young, Tien-Cheng (1970). "The International Civil Service Reexamined". Public Administration Review. 30 (3): 217–224. doi:10.2307/974031. JSTOR 974031.
3. Vago, Steven (1990). "Book review: International Policies for Third World Education". Comparative Education Review. 34: 152–154. doi:10.1086/446913. JSTOR 1188565.

Government offices
Preceded by Vittorino Veronese	Director-General of UNESCO 1961 – 1974	Succeeded by Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow