Education
Boland studied law at the King's Inns, Dublin, and from 1926 to 1928 did postgraduate work as a Rockefeller research fellow, which gave him a chance to do gradute work at Harvard, Chicago University and the University of North Carolina.
Boland studied law at the King's Inns, Dublin, and from 1926 to 1928 did postgraduate work as a Rockefeller research fellow, which gave him a chance to do gradute work at Harvard, Chicago University and the University of North Carolina.
He entered the Irish Foreign Service in 1929 as a third secretary, rising to first secretary on assignment to the Irish legation in Paris four years later. In 1934 he was named head of the League of Nations section in the Irish government's department of external affairs and, after two years, he became head of the foreign trade division. He was promoted to assistant secretary in 1938 and secretary in 1946. Boland went to London as ambassador in 1950, a position he held until 1956, when he became Ireland's representative to the United Nations. In 1958 he was appointed chairman of the Assembly's trusteeship committee, and during the period 1960-1961, he served as president of the General Assembly. Boland's tenure as a United Nation's representative lasted until 1964, and in that same year, he was appointed to the Chancellorship of Dublin University.