The Foreign Service Journal, September 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2014 37 Honesty and candor have been the watchwords of this three-time AFSA dissent award winner’s diplomatic career. BY KENNETH M . QU I NN INTEGRITY ANDOPENNESS: Requirements for anEffective ForeignService Kenneth M. Quinn, the only three-time winner of an AFSA dissent award, spent 32 years in the Foreign Service and served as ambassador to Cambodia from 1996 to 1999. He has been president of the World Food Prize Foundation since 2000. FOCUS AFSA HONORS DISSENT AND PERFORMANCE F rom the very start of my 32-year Foreign Service career, through one of my final actions as chief of mission in Phnom Penh, constructive dissent has been integral to most positions I have held and decisions I had to make. While my willingness to challenge U.S. policy on issues ranging from genocide and terrorism to normalizing relations with Vietnam may have cost me a job or two along the way, the respect of my fellow officers and the three awards for con- structive dissent AFSA has conferred on me motivated me to keep speaking up. My first experience as a dissenter occurred in 1968. After completing the A-100 course, I had moved on to the Vietnam Training Center to prepare for my first assignment in that wartorn country. This was shortly after the Tet Offensive, which had claimed the lives of a number of Foreign Service officers, and amid growing doubt that our goals in Vietnam were “worth dying for.” In fact, several FSOs who had served there found the assignment so morally confounding that they either resigned or asked for reassignment just a few months after arriving “in country,” effectively ending their careers.