THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2024 11 LETTERS PLUS Inspired to ponder “The Ideal Foreign Service” by Josh Morris—the thirdplace winner in AFSA’s 2024 Centennial Writing Competition—I would want each U.S. diplomat to be equipped with advanced linguistic proficiencies in one (or more) non-English language, in other words to be “bilingual” … at least. Moreover, I would prioritize bilingualism among FSO candidates during the selection process. While English and French are the only two recognized working languages of the United Nations’ Secretariat, to assume either is sufficient for the critical work of international relationship-building would be a gross simplification, not to mention glaringly egotistical. Currently, the Foreign Service (FS) relegates bilingualism to a subskill within the essential skill (“dimension”) of cultural adaptability. This low prioritization of bilingualism is reflected in the FSO hiring process, which, as of June 2024, comprises five steps: (1) applying for the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT); (2) participating and passing the Foreign Service Officer Assessment (FSOA); (3) completing final reviews (e.g., medical, security); (4) being placed on the register, where additional credit is awarded to veterans and to those with proficiencies in certain languages; and, finally, (5) receiving a final offer. The Ideal, Bilingual Foreign Service BY ROGER W. ANDERSON RESPONSE TO A JULY AUGUST 2024 FEATURE ARTICLE, “THE IDEAL FOREIGN SERVICE” Roger W. Anderson is an independent scholar living in Monterey, California. He earned a PhD in foreign/second language education from Ohio State University as well as master’s degrees in African studies and French from Ohio University and in teaching Arabic as a foreign language from Middlebury College. The content of this essay is the sole responsibility of the author. In burying language testing deep within the process, the FS may be inadvertently losing candidates with invaluable language and cultural knowledge. What’s more, the FS has no mechanism to even ascertain a count of such candidates. Let’s imagine an FSO candidate, a U.S. citizen who speaks, reads, and understands Mandarin Chinese at an ILR (interagency language roundtable) level 3. Level 3 is considered “general professional proficiency” and typically takes a language student at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) two years of study to achieve. Equally impressive is her near-insider cultural knowledge. She acquired these skills either through her upbringing in a Mandarin-speaking community and years of dual-language study (maintained by committed parents and networks), or as a tenacious nonnative speaker aided by study abroad opportunities, including one of the many programs funded by the U.S. government. Currently, if she does not pass the FSOT or the FSOA, she will not become a U.S. diplomat. When rejecting her candidacy, the examiners were not even aware of the exceptional bilingualism and cultural expertise she would bring to the diplomatic corps. Her candidacy simply did not endure through the stage of language testing. To put a finer point on it, the current process values a candidate’s bilingualism less than her general knowledge of international affairs (tested by the FSOT) and her ability to produce a memo and work with others (tested by the FSOA), together referred to hereafter as “diplomatic skills.” This valuation invites the question: Are diplomatic skills in fact more valuable than bilingualism, including advanced proficiency in a Category IV language? Is it more (cost) effective to facilitate the acquisition of a diplomat’s bilingualism and insider-level cultural savoir faire than their general knowledge and administrative skills? Undoubtedly, FSI’s School of Language Studies provides excellent training, yet is the U.S. really positioned to squander linguistic and cultural capital that takes months or even years to cultivate? Further, the secondary effects of her rejection in round one or two should give the FS pause. What message is conveyed to this candidate’s Mandarin-speaking community about the government’s view of the value of maintained language skills? The disinterest it suggests in the potential contributions of Chinese Americans seems counterproductive to current initiatives to render the FS as diverse as the American people. Conversely, if the rejected candidate is a non-native Mandarin speaker, what does her rejection indicate about the value of the Fulbright, Boren, Flagship, or Critical Language scholarships in which she participated, which the U.S. taxpayers provided her?
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