The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 21 said: “Let’s think about this. Let’s think about it seriously. Let’s see if we can try this going forward.” ACTION #3— CHANGE THE CULTURE Ambassador Marc Grossman: To change the culture, you all know, is a hard one. This is the one that takes the most effort; but again, I go back to the conversations we had inside our com- munity and with our military colleagues who said, unless you’re prepared to have a brutal self-examination, the rest of the reforms don’t happen. The first thing we start with are all the good things about the Foreign Service culture: the patriotism, the service, the sacrifice, families. And those are the really great things we have inside our culture; but you all know there are a lot of ways that our culture gets in the way of doing the best job. It’s about tell- ing truth to power. And it’s about telling the truth to ourselves. It’s about finding ways to be high-performing, and there’s a whole list of them in the report. We think that that change now has to come, and it has to come from self-examination. One more point about culture. There’s a lot of conversa- tion about risk. There’s risk that’s physical and there’s risk that’s policy. We want to make sure there’s a distinction. The question is how do you get people to do more on the risk side on policy? In terms of the question of physical risk, it’s one of the reasons we support the effort of the American Academy of Diplomacy to change the Accountability Review Board so that people can get out and do the job that they signed up to do. ACTION #4—DIVERSITY Ambassador Nicholas Burns: We have a fourth recommen- dation, that diversity has to be a first-order strategic priority. There has to be a relentless focus on diversity. We heard more anger about diversity, more genuine passion and a desire for reform, particularly on the part of our younger officers, on this than on any other issue. The situation is, quite frankly, unac- ceptable. We have failed to produce a Foreign and Civil Service that looks like America and the great tradition of our multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious society. Here are some data points to illustrate that. If you look at the Senior Foreign Service now and look at the per- centage of African Ameri- can officers in the current Senior Foreign Service and the percentage of Latino and Latina Americans in the Senior Foreign Service, it really hasn’t changed much in 20 years. We have not made progress; both groups [are] underrepre- sented. President Trump appointed 189 ambassadors over the last four years. Five of them have been African American. During President Obama’s administration with Joe Biden, 46 of their ambassadors were African Americans. During George W. Bush’s administration, 44 of his ambassadors were African American. We’ve moved backward in a very dramatic way. We are recommending that the next Secretary of State and next Deputy Secretary of State take this on as their direct responsibility. What also really stood out to us were all the affinity groups in the State Department. These are employee-led groups. They form on their own, and they’re a repository of really good ideas, of best practices, of innovation. They’re incredibly impressive people. They had a big impact on us. I remember one of them said in a very long three-hour meeting we had with them, “Struc- tural problems require structural reforms.” So we’re proposing structural reforms. We believe promotion from the entry level to the midlevel, from the midlevel to the senior level, from senior level to DCM and ambassador should be dependent on and contingent on, “Has this person mentored someone? Has this person actually worked to advance the cause of diversity in 21st-century America and in the State Department?” If you have, you can be promoted. If you haven’t, you should not be promoted. ACTION #5—PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING Ambassador Marcie Ries: This whole project is aimed at hav- ing a Foreign Service that’s at the top of its game. So, of course, we had to give some attention to professionalization, to educa- tion. When Colin Powell came to the State Department, he talked about how in his 35-year career, he had had seven years of educa- tion and training, and he was fond of asking others around him: Speaking at the Nov. 19 event, clockwise from top left: Ambassadors Eric Rubin, Nick Burns, Marc Grossman and Marcie Ries. AFSA/CAMERONWOODWORTH