The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

24 MAY 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL FOCUS I have been writing about the Foreign Service and the American Foreign Service Association for a long time, and I have a confession to make: For most of my years on active duty, which ran from 1967 to 1985, I was not an AFSA member. Around 1972, when it became clear that AFSA would represent members of the U.S. Foreign Service in employee- management negotiations, I canceled my membership. I believed then that a commissioned officer, which I was, should not belong to a labor union. For me, the interests of the Foreign Service of the United States and the interests of the Department of State (my agency) were essentially the same. I looked to the Director General and the department’s managers to resolve such conflicts as might arise. I was wrong about that. Worse, I was stupid wrong. I knew that in the 1950s the State Department, rather than respond to the Red-baiting, gay-bashing Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.) with courage and basic decency, had instead attacked its own employees. And I knew that President Richard Nixon’s White House had it in for State Department employees who, even in private, expressed doubts about the war in Vietnam. I knew Harry W. Kopp is the author of The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association and other works. He is a frequent contributor to The Foreign Service Journal and serves on its editorial board. Here’s how the U.S. Foreign Service found its voice in the late 1960s. It’s up to today’s AFSAmembers to keep it relevant. BY HARRY W. KOPP Lessons for Today fromAFSA’s Past ON PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMATS: LEADERSHIP & LESSONS RoleModels