U.S. Department of State – Promoting Diversity: A Case for Foreign Service Reform

The Inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden as the 46th president of the United States, following a protracted legal struggle over the designation of electoral college votes and an ideological battle over “the soul” of the nation, marks a significant shift in the demographic and civic landscape in modern U.S. politics. President Biden’s call for unity and his commitment to diversity – which included a pledge to establish a fully representative government, the selection of the country’s first woman and African-American/Asian-American Vice President Kamala Harris, and the establishment of the most diverse Cabinet in U.S. history – is befitting for a country made up of immigrants, and for the onward trajectory of a more prosperous and inclusive United States government. If all of Biden’s nominees are confirmed, his Cabinet will contain more women and minorities than any other Cabinet in U.S. history. In particular, President Biden’s selection of New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland (D-NM) (from my home state) to serve as the nation’s first Native-American Cabinet secretary and head of the Interior Department; his selection of Gen. Llyod Austin to serve as the first Black Secretary of Defense; the selection of Rachel Levine, as his assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, an openly transgender public health official; and the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, an immigrant Latino-American to head the Department of Homeland Security, are all seismic events in a tepid history of inclusion, and demonstrates a turning-point in the U.S. government’s relationship with the nation’s most marginalized communities. Biden’s historic appointments could not have come at a better time, nor could they have been cast against a more dire backdrop – one of a nation tormented by deep historical racial divides, an onslaught of growing intercommunal strife, and grief that manifested itself (toward the end of a tumultuous Trump era) in seemingly uncontrollable hate and anger.

Diversity in the Cabinet however, as historic and important as that is, cannot drive systemic change by itself, there is need for a trickledown-effect that incorporates organizational structures within the rank and file. It is thus the responsibility of newly appointed leaders, like Haaland, Mayorkas, Blinken, and Austin to breakdown long-lasting cultural and organizational barriers that have disadvantaged minority groups and have sustained exclusionary employment policies within government institutions for years. The U.S. Department of State is perhaps the best example of a federal institution needing systemic reform. The Foreign Service Act of 1980, which provides the legal framework for U.S. foreign operations around the world, is vastly outdated and severely ill-suited for the emerging inclusive U.S. domestic and foreign policy framework. As Philip Zilekow wrote in an October 2020 Foreign Policy article, “the state department as an institution has atrophied.” He argued insightfully that the institution was built for another age, and that it needed to undergo policy and organizational restructuring in order to better serve a 21st century America. He identified four institutional pillars needing change, two of which are critical. First, the government must redefine and broaden the foreign service; and second, it must work to restore the State Department’s central role in foreign policy formulation. 

The State Department’s Organizational Failure

Ambassadors Linda Thomas Greenfield and William J. Burns, Cabinet nominees for the Ambassador to the United Nations and director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Biden administration, urged the U.S. government in an August 2020 Foreign Affairs magazine op-ed, to reinvent its foreign policy strategy by focusing on the American people and American values. They are now both in key leadership positions and can make good on their suggestions, along with their former State Department colleague Ambassador Antony Blinken who assumed the nation’s top U.S. diplomatic role on January 26. Blinken, a career-diplomat, who has a long history at the State Department, will have to navigate an organization that is deeply divided, a foreign service that is rooted in maintaining the status quo, and a nation hungry for institutional change and broad inclusive representation. Key challenges he will face include how to improve diversity, broaden expertise, and redirect U.S. diplomatic resources and deployments around a rapidly evolving world. Addressing the department’s human capital needs and ensuring diversity within its ranks will have to be a top priority. Despite the State Department’s expressed intentions to recruit broadly, the department is virtually closed off to some of the nation’s most qualified professionals. In the current system, career professional such as academics, historians, economists, scientists, leading-experts, writers, analysts, and even career/seasoned government bureaucrats have very limited inroads into the foreign service. Their inability to join the foreign service degrades our foreign policy goals, and is largely perpetuated by outdated and obscure recruitment methods and antiquated State Department regulations—many of which have been accused of being exclusionary. These dated policies also inadvertently promote an elitist and inflexible insular culture that does not equitably represent the people of the United States.  Complete overhaul in how the nation recruits and retains its diplomatic personnel is an inevitable step to move the department closer to truly representing the American people. 

Burns and Thomas-Greenfield—both career diplomats and members of the senior foreign service, concede that “too much of a premium is placed on written and oral examinations and too little on a candidate’s résumé, academic performance, skills, expertise, and life experiences during the recruitment of diplomats;” acknowledging that there is a big dichotomy between how the State Department and our best businesses, including academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, faith-based communities, as well as the rest of the U.S. government recruit and retain talent. The idea that the entire U.S. diplomatic corps is hired on the basis of a single test and effectively disregards educational background, training, specialized experience, technical skill, accomplishments, licensures, and credentials, is counter intuitive and uniquely counterproductive. According to civil rights activists, the State Department’s failure in this regard primarily affects minority applicants. They insist the foreign service recruitment process is inherently prejudicial, designed to keep minorities out. The foreign service written test and the oral exam, as they see it, are unnecessary barriers to entry. That is not to say a standard of entry is not required. Instead, they contend what is required is an educated, skilled, trustworthy, and diverse diplomatic corps – all of which can be obtained without the foreign service officer test. USAID, the Foreign Agriculture Service, and the Foreign Commercial Service all recruit foreign service officers without it. In any process to be adopted, it is clear more inclusion – by means of better access, has to come about quickly if the State Department and by extension the United States is to overcome systemic bias in its institutional culture.

The foreign service, if not prejudicial, certainly operates outside of the traditional civil service personnel structure. Its rules and regulations, many of which are thought to be arcane and archaic, governing recruitment, hiring, promotions, benefits, and pensions differ from most of the remaining government. More to the point, the system does not mesh well with the rest of the U.S. government, restricting any meaningful interexchange of ideas – and more critically, blocking human capital exchange between the foreign service (which is often perceived as elitist and insular) and the rest of the U.S. government. As a result, the foreign service has become increasingly isolated, and is often sidestepped, undermined, and in some instances completely ignored in the interagency policy process. Federal agencies, eager to streamline their access to foreign governments, have found growing reasons to circumvent the State Department altogether by moving their domestic operations abroad, making the foreign service as we understand it increasingly irrelevant.  More than two dozen federal agencies now have personnel abroad. 

The foreign service is therefore facing somewhat of an existential crisis. Threats exist within it and without, especially because “the Foreign Service,” is not a singular definitive Foreign Service as such. Instead, it is an amalgamation of entities that, incidentally, interact poorly with one another – the State Department Foreign Service, USAID Foreign Service, Department of Agriculture Foreign Service, and The Foreign Commerce Service – all operate separate and independent of one another. This is yet another example of an ineffective personnel design. For instance, there is no mechanism for a State Department foreign service officer to cross over to USAID (despite being under a singular banner) or vice versa, the same goes for the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. This creates serious inter-functionality problems and discourages cross pollination of ideas and systems. Although there are limited opportunities for “details,” these opportunities do not give employees the independence or freedom to operate outside the control of their respective organizations. The foreign service practice of hiring “generalist” versus “specialists” must be evaluated further, as an increase in complexity in the 21st century world requires more specialization not less. By contrast, the Civil Service system, introduced to the Department of State in the early 20th century through a series of executive orders, is inter-functional, more transparent, and cross cutting. Employees are recruited and offered employment based on education, work experience, knowledge and skill. They enter the government at entry, mid-level, and senior posts, depending on their qualifications.  They are hired and advance in grade by moving to more highly rated, more challenging, and more responsible positions as they gain specialized experience.

Decades-old Institutional Barriers Stifle Diversity

In the Foreign Service, there simply aren’t any pathways for our most technically savvy economists for example, those working at Treasury, Commerce, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), or State/City Departments of Finance to effectively transition to Senior Economic Officer positions abroad. Their knowledge and abilities—cultivated through years of training and experience working on issues such as inflation derivatives, quantitative easing protocols, stimulus adaptations, domestic and global recession measures, would greatly enhance our ability to understand and leverage economic trends globally, yet such experts do not have clear pathways into the service. Instead, our 307 embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions around the world rely on a cadre of officers – all well-meaning and sharp as a tack – but have limited technical economic training and who invariably lack practical economic work experience.  Public health professionals across our many cities and states, as well as those at federal institutions like the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) are likely better suited to run the $6 billion President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) efforts in the 50 countries around the globe than a career diplomat. This has given reason for the department to develop a special Limited Non-Career Appointment program for public health professionals. Academics, historians, teachers, even preachers are also likely better equipped for many public diplomacy jobs at the embassies around the globe due to their specialized skillsets. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the State Department annually on International Narcotics and Law Enforcement would benefit from specialized federal, state, and local counter-narcotic experts from state and local levels. According to Burns and Greenfield, “today’s diplomacy is nearly always developed by a team of government experts, many of whom are Civil Service professionals. Yet these very professionals cannot easily transfer into the foreign service without taking a massive reduction in pay, and an even bigger demotion in rank and responsibility.  Civil servants that are within the State Department also generally have very limited leadership slots to transition into, and are rarely given the opportunity to promote to ambassadorial positions.

Although some State bureaus have had deputy assistant secretaries who are Civil Service employees; and in very rare/exceptional cases serve as an assistant secretary or an ambassador, the current system overwhelmingly disadvantages those in the Civil Service – and by extension America’s minorities. In a reformed State Department, assistant secretary jobs and ambassadorial appointments, as well as senior jobs overseas should be held by well-qualified career officers regardless of personnel category. The term “Career Officers” should not exclusively refer to “State Senior Foreign Service Officers,” as there are other qualified candidates in Senior Executive Service at State, USAID, NSC, Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, CDC, Congressional committees, and elsewhere that should be considered. These appointments should be driven by substantive qualifications and diversity considerations, not by campaign donations nor as a reward for time-served in the foreign service. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, our newest and arguably most innovative foreign assistance institution hires exclusively at the mid/senior levels for its posts overseas.   

The current restriction between the Foreign Service and Civil Service not only stifles growth for the government as a whole, but as Thomas-Greenfield and Burns note, it ultimately serves to “perpetuate the imbalance that has prevented too many talented Americans—disproportionally those from underrepresented groups—from serving their country [abroad].” According to OPM, in 2017 minorities made up a total of 37.1% of the government, by contrast roughly 17.5% of the foreign service. That is less than half the representation. A mere 8% of Senior Foreign Service ranks are minorities. The Senior Executive Service, although far from perfect, has 21.2% minorities within its ranks. In the Trump administration, it has been widely reported that only three out of 189 American ambassadors who served abroad were Black. This lack of diversity within the ranks of “the face of our nation” only hurts America’s diplomatic effectiveness and by extension weakens U.S. national security.

The department must move away from such a bifurcated system and instead focus on building a workforce that better reflects our nation’s true demographics and leverages the creativity of diversity, talent, and experience of the American workforce to better advance U.S. foreign policy priorities. The Foreign Service Act of 1980 is in many ways outdated and the State Department –built for a different era, has ultimately become less than effective. Congress and the Biden administration should take a serious look at a unitary personnel system across all of government.

Redefining the Foreign Service

The State Department at its inception was essentially a place mostly reserved for only the politically connected. That was supposed to change with the passage of the Foreign Service Act of 1924, again in 1946, and finally in its current adaptation in 1980, however, the so-called merit-based U.S. diplomatic corps has proven to be less than transparent and significantly less equitable than other government personnel systems. This is a growing pressure point for the Foreign Service, especially given that entry into the Foreign Service is restricted to entry level only, meaning those that enter the system have very little means to effect change within it. Entry level also means that those that join do not generally have lengthy experience in the workplace (especially in government), and thus are less able to correct potential defects in the culture, even if they so desired. By the time they are mid-level officers they are fully vested in a system that doesn’t necessarily serve them, but has a set of rewards/perks worth holding out for. This undermines morale as well as the policy process, as dissenting views are generally unwelcome, and views based on perspective, judgement, and expertise give way to the pressures of group think and institutional bias. This in turn breeds an unyielding hierarchical culture where those at the top exercise impunity over lower ranking officers by means of control over promotion and assignment, regardless of the decision’s policy soundness or procedural effectiveness. Savvy foreign service officers quickly learn promotion is not necessarily determined based on merit or accomplishment, but instead more likely on “getting along” or – in diplospeak “playing well with others.” The end goal however, is mostly just to maintain the status quo. Those that buck the system (or attempt to enact change) simply do not get promoted and miss out on the most exciting and sought-after assignments. As Burns and Thomas-Greenfield note, the “rigid promotion structure of the foreign service, only serves to incentivize careerism over political or moral bravery,” killing initiative and drive in the short term, and driving bad foreign policy decisions in the long run.

Limited opportunities for officers to diversify and develop new skills prevent growth. Those that do not come to the service with graduate degrees have limited opportunities for graduate or professional education, but more importantly are disincentivized to pursue such opportunities given that external degrees hold little weight with promotion panels who ultimately determine the trajectory of their careers. The effect, as Thomas-Greenfield and Burns put it, “is often to penalize employees who receive extra training or undertake assignments to other agencies or to Congress.” Even worse, those that come into the service with professional accolades and terminal degrees (including cultural or language expertise) are often ostracized and forced to downplay their credentials in the spirit of being an “entry level officer,” choosing to go along, rather than challenge, a culture that values internal praises above external accomplishments. The inevitable result is simply detrimental for U.S. foreign policy. The system should instead reward such individuals and create promotional potential that takes education and new skill development into consideration. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who also served as the Director General of the Foreign Service (the de facto head of human resources) said the department “should also streamline the evaluation process by determining personnel assignments on the basis of performance, expertise, and leadership development rather than through a process of competitive, careerist bidding built on connections, word-of-mouth, and reputation.” Change in the personnel structure to reflect the civil service will therefore also help foreign service officers, who often feel trapped and confined by a restrictive system. In such a model, foreign service officers can leave the department to work in other government agencies or the private sector and have inroads to return at higher grades after developing new experiences and qualifications.  

Thomas-Greenfield and others have thus proposed creating midcareer pathways into the Foreign Service, including lateral entry from the civil service; and offering opportunities for Americans with unique skills to serve their country through fixed-term appointments. This can be a helpful solution. On July 20, 2020, representative Karen Bass of California, along with ten of her democratic colleagues also introduced the Represent America Abroad Act Bill to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The bill is certainly a starting point that will help bridge the gap between the American people and its Foreign Service, however, the bill in its current iteration, is not inclusive enough, as it does nothing to dismantle long-lasting and existing barriers within the broader organization. Rigorous debate about the nature of the foreign service, its current peculiarities, and insular culture must be considered. Administrative features such as two-year tours, employee perks and benefits, transparency in hiring, true salary depiction, and inclusion should all be up for examination and scrutiny. Making yet another modification to a system that has proven restrictive and unequal, is perhaps not the right answer. Instead, a complete dismantling of the foreign service and the adoption of the civil service, a model used across the federal government may be more conducive for a flexible, adoptable, interexchange-able workforce that more fully represents the American people.

The legacy of a combined “Foreign Service” and “Civil Service” personnel system at the State Department is a century-old problem, dating as far back as 1924. In 1945 the Washington Post famously called for “a complete overhaul” and “radical democratization” of the Foreign Service because of its elitist culture; calling on the State department to place the department’s Foreign Service and Civil Service employees under a single personnel system to promote harmony and skills exchange. At the time, the bureau of budget—(the governments strategic planning arm), also recommended the State Department break down what it viewed as a “closed” and “elite” personnel structure, by mandating the department recruit middle and senior career civil servants into the upper grades of the Foreign Service. 80 years later, the criticism remains valid and the recommendation apt.

President Biden’s executive order titled Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government is a key starting point to increasing diversity and bringing about institutional change at the State Department. The order directs every federal agency to complete a baseline review of the “state of equity” within their agency and to prepare an action plan within 200 days to address unequal barriers to opportunity in agency policies and programs. The issues addressed in this article should be at the forefront of that report, all of which are critical pieces to moving the State Department out of a state of torpor and to being more inclusive, credible, and reflective of the American people.