The Foreign Service Journal, September 2013

22 SEPTEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL in Vietnam, received the 1968 Herter Award for his recom- mendations about U.S. policy. His nomination termed him “a controversial figure, a man who insisted on maintaining his independence and integrity at all costs. … His judgments have been repeatedly proven right by time.” Three decades later, Edmund McWilliams would win the same award while serving as political counselor in Jakarta. Long before the resignation of President Suharto, McWilliams had a “seemingly prescient view of Indonesia’s imminent political transition.” As the colleague who nominated him in 1998 observed, “No individual within the embassy did more to promote a U.S. reappraisal of the distribution of benefits from Indonesia’s economic growth and of the nation’s readi- ness for fundamental political reform. … Never have I served with anyone more aggressive and tenacious in challenging existing policies, while encouraging lively debate of the issues in the embassy.” Anthony Quainton received the Rivkin Award in 1972 for his reporting and analysis during the India-Pakistan crisis the previous year. (Later, as ambassador to Nicaragua, he would receive the Herter Award in 1984.) His Rivkin Award nomination read, in part: “He is always able to question whether the accepted policy genuinely fulfills U.S. needs and make innovative proposals for constructive change. He has the knack of taking the initiative and putting forward a new and sometimes dissenting view when that view is critical to a policy decision being made. He has the ability to argue his case skillfully and aggressively but without offense. … In other words, Mr. Quainton has demonstrated that a middle-ranking officer can have major impact upon policy.” Each of us should put dissent alongside our Service’s core values of duty, honor and country. The Nomination Process A nyone may propose a superior, peer or subordi- nate—or themselves—for an AFSA dissent award, as long as the nomination (700 words or fewer) includes all of the following elements: • Name of the award for which the person is being nominated, along with the nominee’s name, grade, agency and position. • The nominator’s name, grade, agency and position, along with a description of his or her association with the nominee. • A justification for nomination that describes the actions and qualities that qualify the nominee for the award. This should cite specific examples demonstrat- ing that he or she has “exhibited extraordinary accom- plishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and constructive dissent.” Only career or career-conditional members of the for- eign affairs agencies (i.e., State, USAID, FCS, FAS, IBB and APHIS) are eligible for a constructive dissent award. Additional Guidelines An individual may be nominated more than once in different years for the same award, provided that he/she has never won that award. The time period during which the actions attributed to the nominee took place does not have to be within the most recent calendar year. However, they should have occurred not more than four years before the time of the nomination. While messages sent via the State Department Dis- sent Channel and USAID’s Direct Channel may be cited as the basis of a dissent award, it is still necessary to submit a nomination directly to AFSA for consider- ation. For more detailed information on AFSA’s Construc- tive Dissent Award Program, including criteria and procedures for nominating recipients and lists of past winners, visit www.afsa.org/dissent_and_other_awards. aspx, or contact Perri Green, AFSA’s coordinator for awards and outreach, at green@afsa.org o r (202) 338- 4045, ext. 521.