THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH-APRIL 2026 19 SPEAKING OUT Eric Rubin joined the State Department Foreign Service as a political officer in 1985 and retired in 2023. He served in Honduras, Ukraine, Thailand, Russia, and Washington, D.C., and as U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria from 2016 to 2019. He was president of AFSA from 2019 to 2023. The views expressed here are solely those of the author. A lot has changed at the State Department and in the Foreign Service since President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025. One of the most significant developments is the rise of the Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF). The fellowship was founded in 2024 by a group of retired and active-duty Foreign Service officers with the notion that the State Department, and specifically the Foreign Service, had become “woke” and that DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) efforts had led to a decline in meritocracy and the imposition of a liberal-left orthodoxy among career employees, both Civil Service and Foreign Service. Initial funding sources for the BFF are opaque and unclear. We know that the BFF received a Heritage Foundation Innovation Award in 2025. Whether it has received additional funding from Heritage or from Heritage’s billionaire donors is not publicly disclosed. What is clear is that with the inauguration of President Trump for a second term in January 2025, the BFF moved forward with official sanction to become not only a major player inside and outside State but within a few months to become the only employee organization permitted to function at all: The Trump administration banned all other employee organizations and unions from operating at State. The recall of at least 29 serving career ambassadors right before Christmas, with no public announcements and no explanation, leaves more than 100 U.S. ambassadorships vacant around the world, furthering the perception that it is no longer enough for senior career employees to (as always) avoid partisan politics and carry out the policies established by the president to the best of their ability. While the administration has refused to acknowledge any kind of political test for career officials, it has added “fidelity” to the Foreign Service promotion precepts and encouraged the perception that only political supporters of the president will receive nominations to high-level positions. What’s Wrong with the Ben Franklin Fellowship? BY ERIC RUBIN Official Relationships Canceled The Thursday Luncheon Group was founded in 1973 as a discussion group supporting Black Americans in the Foreign Service and the foreign affairs community. It was followed by more than a dozen other employee organizations, including the Disability Action Group (DAG), Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (glifaa), Executive Women @ State, Hispanic Employees Council of Foreign Affairs Agencies (HECFAA), and the Christian employee group GRACE (the first faith-based group formed at State in 2018). All these groups had official recognition and a modicum of support from State. When Trump took office for a second time, the administration pulled recognition for all the employee organizations and banned them from using any State Department facilities. Some have worked to continue their efforts “off-campus,” and AFSA offered its headquarters for meetings. Meanwhile, more than 50 years after their official recognition in bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon in We must stand up for the vision of our Foreign Service being representative of our country in every respect.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=