The Foreign Service Journal, April 2013

the Foreign Service journal | April 2013 11 top talent? If it is the former, all of the specialist’s diversity cheerleading—that State is “like one big family...amplified by camaraderie and close relationships,” etc.—cannot obscure the fact that the taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick. Hiring and promoting people with a view to their gender, sexual orienta- tion, ethnicity and skin color necessarily promotes both the exclusion and the non-retention of top talent. Whatever its origins and background, top talent goes where it can compete freely and with least limitation, not where its prospects are confined to this or that group created by some Equal Employment Opportunity counter of ethnologic beans. And how is diversity working out for State, and for the taxpayer? According to AFSA President Susan Johnson (see “Building a Truly Diverse, Professional Foreign Service,” December FSJ) , the For- eign Service is failing to “bind a diverse group of officers and specialists into a cohesive cadre.” Nor do Foreign Service members share a “common understand- ing of their mission and of their role in achieving it.” So the Service needs the infusion of a “consistent, career-long ethos of excellence, discipline and pro- fessionalism.” All of this suggests to me that there must be a destructive tension at State in the relationship between professionalism and the search for diversity, at least in the way that search is carried out. I do not believe that the professional problems raised by the AFSA president are as amenable to structural and train- ing reforms as she goes on to suggest. Besides, why should State be tasked to train up officers in the ways of “excel- lence, discipline and professionalism”? Are new FSOs no longer expected to have such qualities? Perhaps the source of the difficulty lies with Foreign Service recruitment. Are recruiters, examiners and EEO monitors so beguiled by diversity that, too often, they judge a book by its cover? Are they sufficiently tuned to the importance of values, to the need to seek and reward not only top talent, but optimal educa- tional and cultural formation, as well as dedication to country? Without such basics coming in at the bottom of the State employment pyra- mid, there can be no effective Foreign Service. Richard W. Hoover FSO, retired Front Royal, Va. CORRECTIONS In the obituary for Michael Bricker (February, p. 65), retired Senior FSO Timothy C. Lawson, who shared his recollections of Mr. Bricker, was inad- vertently misidentified. When he served with Mr. Bricker in Seoul, Mr. Lawson was an information management officer, not the deputy chief of mission. In the March issue, there is a typo- graphical error in the caption on p. 33. The assistant secretary of State for popu- lation, refugees and migration is Anne Richard, not “Richards.” We regret the errors. n H .