[2] His mother, Cecilia Harvey (Coale), was a secretary for the League of Women Voters, while his father, Donald Beauchamp Van Hollen, worked for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, before joining the family's seafood business.
[2] He briefly attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, but left to enlist in the United States Navy in 1942 during World War II.
[2] While studying at Johns Hopkins, Van Hollen worked as the campaign manager for congressional candidate Leo McCormick in his Democratic primary challenge against incumbent U.S. Rep. George Fallon in 1948.
[2][5] Van Hollen joined U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's executive secretariat shortly after completing his doctorate at Johns Hopkins.
[2] In 1980 he published a widely quoted article, titled "The Tilt Policy Revisited", about the handling of the 1971 crisis in South Asia in the journal Asian Survey.