28 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL other FSOs subpoenaed chose to testify. (The choice infuriated Secretary Pompeo. He later wrote, falsely: “Yovanovitch was the quintessential example of a leftist, progressive, activist Foreign Service officer who behaved in ways that would have made our Founders cry.”) AFSA President Eric Rubin (2019-2023) and the board felt the weight of history. “We knew,” Rubin said, “that we had failed to adequately support our members during the McCarthy period. … The feeling on the board was, this is a moment of testing; we’ve got to be worthy of it.” More than moral support, AFSA offered money. A Legal Defense Fund had been set up in 2007; a public call for contributions raised $750,000 in three months, available to witnesses who were AFSA members. No AFSA member was out a single penny. AFSA Forward. Many of the goals for which AFSA had fought, sometimes for years, were accomplished in a rush when the Trump administration left office—parental leave; in-state college tuition for Foreign Service members serving abroad; protections comparable to those afforded the military for Foreign Service members forced by transfer to break car leases, cell phone contracts, and the like; improvements in the government’s response to “anomalous health incidents” (Havana syndrome); and others. “The administration has been no help at all,” said Eric Rubin. “We do it ourselves on the Hill.” Across all agencies, close to 80 percent of active-duty members of the Foreign Service belong to AFSA. Its finances are solid, with a budget of around $5.5 million. It owns its building, free of liens. AFSA is stronger now than it has ever been. The question for AFSA’s leadership, and even more for AFSA’s membership, is how to bring that strength to bear to achieve the association’s goals: to promote the career Service as the institutional backbone of American diplomacy; to protect the rights and interests of its members; to maintain high professional standards for all American diplomats, career and non-career; and to be a strong advocate for the Foreign Service with agency management, the administration, Congress, and the public. AFSA is the voice of the U.S. Foreign Service. It needs to be heard. n
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