The Foreign Service Journal, March 2021

42 MARCH 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Make the Civil Service an “excepted” service. Revamp the security clearance system . It currently takes an average of 10 to 18 months to on-board a new hire. Replace the grievance and discipline systems with ones that incorporate fair process, due process, full safeguards and timely decisions (not one year or more, as under current practice) so that employees have faith in their objectivity and equity. Alex Karagiannis and Katherine Ingmanson are retired FSOs in Falls Church, Virginia. Tap Existing Diversity While diversity and inclusion at State must improve, I believe that the existing diversity within our Service must be used more effectively and strategically. The American identity is a multicultural and multireligious one. As a U.S. Foreign Service officer, a child of immigrants and a woman raised in a Muslim household, I am an example of our multifaceted society. When I’m posted abroad, however, local citizens are surprised that I am a diplomat because of preexist- ing stereotypes about what it means to represent the United States. Our Foreign Service should actively engage with communi- ties abroad to credibly and purposefully communicate U.S. values and practices of religious inclusion, racial and ethnic diversity, gender and sexual-orientation equality, and tolerance. To accomplish this strategic objective, I recommend hav- ing a centralized repository for outreach materials that include toolkits highlighting different groups in our Foreign Service community. For example, the Department of State already has affinity groups. Why not tap into this existing resource to create videos or other social media tools that speak specifically to their experience as an American? Moreover, due to the global pandemic, the Foreign Service has seen the utility of virtual diplomacy, and we learned that “long-distance diplomacy” works. These toolkits can be used by posts around the world to have a more strategic and surgi- cal approach to outreach, instead of relying only on the FSOs assigned to the post. The result will be a more targeted, inclusive and precise approach to outreach. FSO Sadaf Khan is consular chief at U.S. Embassy Podgorica. Require a Common Core of FS Professional Education Before the Foreign Service can reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy, it must be rebuilt and reinvigorated itself. The first and perhaps eas- iest step in this direction is to provide a required common core of ongoing Foreign Service professional education and formation. Almost 40 years after then–Secretary of State George Shultz helped create the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, today’s entering FSOs may have more college degrees, diverse backgrounds and first careers behind them, but they receive less diplomatic service professional education in common than when he was Secretary. Concerned, Shultz recently underscored the importance of “Trust” in a November 2020 FSJ article and called for the creation of a new School of Diplomacy. However, another option exists: Focusing on what is within State’s control, we could rename NFATC to create the George P. Shultz School of Diplomacy, Leadership and Management. This would build on the best of NFATC’s considerable infrastructure and services, eventually bringing short-term offerings into greater alignment within a common professional framework that would include both longer-term professional education and short-term training. A longer-term, continuing professional education framework for all levels of State Department employees could be established through careful development of a nine-month, graduate level, pre-commission professional formation curriculum and certifica- tion to be required of all entering officers. The framework of sub- sequent, continuing education curricula appropriate to mid- and senior career levels would focus on: • Enduring stewardship requirements and responsibilities (history, foundational documents, values, ethics and ethos, grand strategy and international law, norms and institutions). • New and emerging geostrategic challenges (political, eco- nomic, social drivers of change and global transborder challenges such as arms control and nonproliferation, climate change, trade show up