AFSA NEWS AFSA/HANNAH HARARI Meet the 2026 AFSA Essay Contest Winner Diem Jennings Diem Jennings with U.S. Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins at Le Diplomate in Washington, D.C., on August 19. Diem Jennings, a senior at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York, New York, has won AFSA’s 2025–2026 National High School Essay Contest. Her winning essay, “Present at the Destruction: American Foreign Policy and the Abandonment of Diplomatic Engagement,” argues that the United States cannot sustain global leadership following deep cuts to its diplomatic corps and soft-power institutions. Theodore Kinsella, a junior at Venice Senior High School in Los Angeles, California, took second place for his essay, “The Pen, the Sword, and the Diplomat: On American Soft Power.” This year’s contest asked students to respond to the prompt “The Fragile Front Line: U.S. Diplomacy and the Future of Soft Power,” In her winning essay, Jennings explores what she describes as a pattern of American self-sabotage in foreign relations, from a proposed U.S. hospital ship deployment to Greenland that Denmark declined, to a January 2026 military operation in Venezuela conducted without UN authorization, to shifting trade alliances in Latin America. She writes that the erosion of U.S. soft power has created openings that competitors, particularly China, have moved to fill, but also argues the damage is not irreversible with sustained investment in the Foreign Service and renewed alliance-building. Jennings traces her interest in diplomacy to studying Mandarin in Taiwan through the State Department’s NSLIY program. “Diplomacy can seem abstract, but to me, it’s 66 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL deeply personal,” she says. “What we need [in a world full of conflict] are listeners, connectors, and relationshipbuilders.” She plans to major in international politics and economics at Middlebury College and pursue a career as a Foreign Service officer. As the contest winner, Jennings received $2,500 and an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., along with an all-expense-paid Semester at Sea voyage. Her school will also receive 10 copies of Inside a U.S. Embassy: Diplomacy at Work. On August 19, Jennings traveled to Washington, D.C., where she visited the Royal Embassy of Denmark for a meeting with the Greenland Representation, had lunch with Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, toured AFSA headquarters, and visited State Department headquarters. n addressing how the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the effective closure of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the suspension of exchange programs including Fulbright, and a roughly 25 percent reduction in the Foreign Service have affected the United States’ ability to build and sustain relationships abroad. Diem Jennings with AFSA’s Director of Professional Policy Issues Lisa Heller at AFSA HQ in Washington, D.C. on August 19. AFSA/HANNAH HARARI
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