The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 35 Stephen R. Dujack was editor of The Foreign Service Journal from 1981 to 1988. He has been editor of the Environmental Law Institute’s magazine, The Environmental Forum , since 1990. Not coincidentally, it was a period of huge challenges to the diplomatic profession and to foreign affairs profession- als personally. For the former, there were antagonists like Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and later its chair. Helms was always a thorn in the side of the State Department as he sought to impose his worldview on diplomatic officials and, with his “mini-State” on his staff, the foreign policy they carried out. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan was naming an alarming number of political appointees to ambassadorial posts and several unqualified people to key positions at the State Department. The threat to personnel was multifold. It included, importantly, terrorism. The embassy in Beirut was twice car-bombed, with massive loss of life. Assassinations of American officials happened in other venues. The memorial plaque in the C Street Lobby of the Truman Building began to fill rapidly. There was also the onset of AIDS, the deadly and little-understood disease that threatened the “world- wide availability” of infected employees and thus the whole notion of foreign service. It was a time when women were first cementing their gains in the workplace, fracturing the age-old paradigmwherein the uncompensated wife was rated on an annual basis alongside her Foreign Service husband. Now the woman was often the diplomat, or she had an indepen- dent profession. Dual careers and the challenges of raising children overseas were leading many families to simply refuse to move. Finally, the new Foreign Service Act of 1980 and the “up or out” system it created for senior officers was being implemented, to the benefit of diplomacy generally but also the consternation of many. Seldom before was there a greater need for a profes- sional magazine to offer guidance and an arena for robust debate of the issues confronting America’s diplomats. A Great Opportunity The AFSA search committee had made it clear to me that they expected real improvement in the Journal . They wanted an active-duty-focused magazine guided by a peer- reviewing board made up of representatives of each of the foreign affairs agencies, as well as expert public members. The FSJ Editorial Board drafted bylaws to codify these changes, putting in term limits to keep the membership fresh. An important innovation was to have a liaison officer; we put a member of the Governing Board on the Editorial Board so he or she could keep the big board informed as necessary. I realized during the transi- tion that the Journal had a great opportunity to become a true professional magazine for America’s diplomatic employ- ees. That meant content that dealt with Foreign Service issues—including important articles on foreign relations, but written for a professional audience, as well as articles that addressed the unique aspects of overseas careers and lifestyles. I convinced the Governing Board to budget an assistant by promising an increase in ad revenues, and Frances G. Burwell, who held a master’s degree in inter- national relations from Oxford, came on board to act as articles editor and chief salesperson. She made a critical The July-August 1981 FSJ debuted the new approach to covers with this iconic NASA photo of the Earth as seen from the moon.