THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024 31 The Ukraine scandal cast a pall over the department and made almost impossible demands on AFSA. Rubin used his wider messages to convey the seriousness of the moment, pointedly asking whether the gains of professionalism, diversity, and merit-based appointments were in danger “in the context of a highly polarized political environment.” In 2020 he forthrightly stated: “This is the most fraught time and the most difficult time” for the State Department since the 1950s, when McCarthyism targeted dozens of officers as suspected communists and hundreds more lost their employment simply because they were gay. Moving On When there was a change in administration in 2021, Rubin and the AFSA staff conveyed to a new Seventh Floor how deep the damage had been to the institution, as well as pointing to the game-changing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the workplace and families. They highlighted the importance of rebuilding budgets, providing bureaucratic safeguards, and empowering members of the Foreign Service to do their job. The dangers of a renewed attack on the integrity of the State Department have not vanished. If anything, they are growing. Former Ambassador Dennis Jett, in an important article in the January-February 2023 FSJ, detailed just how alarming the proposal for a Schedule F is. It is generating significant political support, including from leading presidential candidates and think tanks. If enacted, it would provide the legal basis for dismissing thousands of civil servants perceived as disloyal by a new administration. Belatedly, the Office of Personnel Management is proposing to strengthen protections for the federal bureaucracy. It needs to: unless it does, the Civil Service The Washington Post describes as “one of the country’s greatest assets,” which includes the professional Foreign Service Ambassadors Barbara Stephenson and Eric Rubin worked so hard to protect, could again be under threat in a future administration. And AFSA’s leadership will be defending it from a much-weakened institutional foundation. n
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