DIDDY R. M. (Seyd) HITCHINS, Ph.D.
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Inducted: 2013
DIDDY R. M. (Seyd) HITCHINS, Ph.D.
Passionately committed to international education, Diddy Hitchins devoted her professional career in Alaska to ensure that University of Alaska Anchorage students and the community had a curriculum that allowed them a real understanding of Alaska’s place in the world.
Born in Scotland and raised in England, she studied politics, sociology, and economics and developed an interest in international relations. Arriving in Alaska in 1974 with Cliff Hitchins, her engineer husband, she was hired by UAA and served as the founding chair of the new Political Science Department, creating its internationally focused curriculum.
Hichins then shifted her academic focus from Europe and Africa to Alaska’s neighbors – Canada, the Russian Far East, Japan, the Koreas, and China – and pursued an understanding of international relations across the North Pacific and Arctic regions. She founded and directed the innovative, multi-disciplinary, and team-taught Canadian Studies Program and the North Pacific Studies Programs at UAA. Hitchins then created the nationally and internationally recognized Model United Nations of Alaska to offer all Alaska high-school students the opportunity to participate in an international simulation, which for many rural youth opened pathways to becoming students at UAA.
Hitchens forged links between UAA and the wider community by sharing her international expertise within organizations such as the Alaska World Affairs Council and the World Trade Center Alaska. She also served for more than 25 years as British Honorary Consul for Alaska and was honored in 2005 when Queen Elizabeth II personally conferred upon her the prestigious “Member of the Order of the British Empire,” or MBE, at Buckingham Palace for her contribution to British-Alaska relations.
In reflecting on her career, Diddy Hitchins said: “The most rewarding experience has been to see my former students – particularly women – pursuing international graduate studies and embarking on careers in the international arena. I am equally warmed by other students who have assumed a variety of roles in Alaska and throughout the USA, whose professional behavior and practice is based on respect for all nations and peoples – values which I also see reflected in my daughter, Dzagbe, who is a successful fashion executive in Seattle.”
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