The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

reported that many attendees — including an Egyptian critic — were critical of U.S. policies in the Middle East. But he did not identify him- self as an American diplomat and make counterarguments (which would have easily fallen within U.S. government policy guidelines), even though he had the knowledge and skills to perform that role. He felt, I believe, the same reluctance to speak out expressed by my more senior colleague mentioned above. It’s a matter of keeping your head down to get ahead, of recognizing that public advocacy won’t help your career, but can certainly damage it if your bosses don’t like what you have to say. I suspect that some readers of this article will claim that I’ve set up a straw man, and would argue that State leadership has never formally tried to muzzle dissident views in speaker programs, nor discouraged FSOs from publicly advocating U.S. government policies. But it is unde- niable that the State Department allows very few officials to speak on the record overseas (or back in the department, for that matter). As a result, FSOs are naturally reluctant to do public speaking even away from the media, even though they’re supporting official policy, which obviously diminishes the value of trained and knowledgeable public diplomacy officers. Soon after we’re minted as FSOs, we begin to develop an appreciation of the strict limits on our initiative when we read our first embassy press guidelines and discover how few people are permitted to speak on the record for the embassy. We also hear examples of colleagues who thought they were speaking either off the record or in an area free of reporters, but whose com- ments somehow got into the media and caused them problems — even if what was said was in line with pol- icy. Or perhaps we have even been burned that way ourselves. As for speaker programs, the proclivity toward conformity of opinion stems largely from the very absence of clear policy regarding this subject. This results in just enough pressure in the form of “suggestions” — “Don’t you think you ought to reconsider that speak- er proposal?” or, “Do you really believe that Washington (or the ambassador, the political section, etc.) would accept that individual?” — to discourage us from hosting the speakers we really need. Since USIA’s consolidation with State in 1999, many of my colleagues have seen the writing on the wall and opined that the days of independent voices are over. (By contrast, before the merger, State officers rarely interfered with the speaker pro- grams of their USIA colleagues.) My political section colleagues have occasionally reminded me that “you work for State now,” and told me directly and indirectly that I will have to accept their political guid- ance to win approval of my public diplomacy programs. Political cor- rectness — by which I mean the pressure to sponsor only the staunchest advocates of current administration policy — now seems to be the watchword. Several col- leagues have, in fact, discouraged me from writing this article, suggest- ing that it won’t help my career. But I think the discussion I’ve outlined would actually be healthy for the Foreign Service as an institution. Besides, after all, what can they do — fire me? Ken Moskowitz joined USIA as an FSO in 1986, serving in Budapest, Washington, D.C., Kiev and Tokyo (twice). He is currently director of the Tokyo American Center. J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17 S P E A K I N G O U T