THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2024 49 This is the story of three critical moments in this campaign. It reveals how the department’s cultural inclination to the status quo may have contributed to the continued underrepresentation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) within the Senior Foreign Service (SFS) and how employees successfully mobilized for change. Establishing the Right to Challenge a Restriction The first public notice of an “assignment restriction” is Lydia DePillis’ Sept. 24, 2013, article in The Washington Post, “At the State Department, Diversity Can Count Against You.” DePillis described how department policies on assignment restrictions disproportionately affected AAPI Foreign Service officers, such as Michael Young, and how these officers had been prevented from serving in or working on Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. As AFSA State vice president at the time, I spoke with DePillis and noted that the issue did not only affect Asian Americans, but the strength of the AAPI employee organization had brought the issue to the fore. That article spurred the initial inquiries to State on the issue from House Foreign Affairs Committee staff, whose sustained interest would prove critical. Six years earlier, Foreign Service Officer Richard Jao had partnered with Benjamin Chiang, Mira Piplani, and Julie Turner to reconstitute the defunct Asian American employee organization at State. It was renamed the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association (AAFAA), and Mariju Bofill was recruited as its first president. In December 2010, Bofill raised the issue of assignment restrictions with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. AFSA, too, had been concerned by the length of time, lack of transparency, and justification for security clearance decisions. In 2006, at congressional request, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) reviewed Diplomatic Security’s (DS) Revocation Process for Security Clearances. OIG recommended a reasonable time for convening and rendering a decision by the Security Appeals Panel (SAP)—“such as 45 days.” Although the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) listed the criteria used to determine an assignment restriction (12 FAM 223.5) and a pass-through denial (12 FAM 263.3-2), additional guidance was needed governing their use, review, or appeal. In its 2011 report on the DS Office of Investigations and Counterintelligence, OIG noted: “The practice [on assignment reviews] has been for the Director General (DG) to defer to DS.” In September 2013, AFSA requested disaggregated demographic data from the State Department to determine whether any groups were being adversely affected. The DS assistant secretary briefed AFSA on the programs, and DS subsequently supplied some aggregate numbers of affected employees and countries of restriction. AFSA summarized its concerns for a November 2014 AFSA News Issue Brief, the first mention of assignment restrictions in The Foreign Service Journal. AFSA President Bob Silverman and I used that piece in our engagement with congressional members and staff. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) were supportive of improving diversity within the Foreign Service. During an April 23, 2015, hearing, Sen. Menendez said to Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom: “The State Department has one of the worst records of diversity of all the federal agencies. … Assignment restrictions and preclusion programs … only exacerbate the problem.” In November 2014, AFSA released an “Issue Brief” presenting its concerns with the process of assignment restrictions. The first mention of “assignment restrictions” in the FSJ, the brief was used to educate legislators and their staff. AFSA/FSJ DIGITAL ARCHIVE
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