William E. Stevenson; Former Envoy

William E. Stevenson, a former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines who served as president of Oberlin College for 13 years, has died at the age of 84. Stevenson, who suffered from cancer, died Tuesday night at his home in Fort Myers, Fla., a college spokesman said.

Stevenson, who was president of Oberlin from 1946 to 1959, was the son of J. Ross Stevenson, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and Princeton, and obtained his law degree in 1925 from Oxford’s Balliol College, where he was a Rhodes scholar.

In 1961, Stevenson was named U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. From 1967 to 1970, he served as president of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. During that time, he also served as a vice chairman of the governors of the American Red Cross and of the League of Red Cross Societies at Geneva, as well as director and vice president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs.