The Foreign Service Journal, December 2020

12 DECEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL One of my recommendations involved forgoing HHE shipments for FSI students but doubling their air freight allowances, theoretically saving money and also ensuring students had access to their shipments after only a few weeks at post. In support of Mr. Leishman’s sugges- tions, my research revealed that many FSI students waited for months for their cars to clear customs, only to have to ship them out again to follow-on posts well before their tour ended. In addition, because FSI students were often new hires, many shipped cars were worth considerably less than the cost of shipping. Having either a pool of used cars for sale to choose from on arrival or the use of a stipend with which to purchase a car locally would have saved time, frustration and—I agree completely with Mr. Leishman— U.S. taxpayers’ money. Let me finish by noting that while the admin officer agreed with my recom- mendations, he feared that raising these cost-saving issues with Wash- ington might well lead to shedding an unwelcome congressional light on the benefits provided to FSOs by the depart- ment, and so such recommendations usually did not go beyond post manage- ment level. Dick Wilbur FSO, retired Barrington, Rhode Island None Is So Blind… After reading the October letters from retired FSO Richard W. Hoover and Ambassador (ret.) Dennis K. Hays, both criticizing colleagues who’ve had the temerity to address institutional racism, I must ask: What country are they living in? What century? Mr. Hoover takes great umbrage at A second suggestion includes ways to increase collaboration among all FS employees, a cause I defended in the December 2013 FSJ (“A Plea for Greater Teamwork in the Foreign Service”). A third is to share past expertise by the department facilitating its employ- ees to author “internal pages that share best practices, ideas and tools.” State did once compile such lessons by former ambassadors, though that publication is now buried in some old file. Finally, Moore suggests that State develop expert career pathways as an option for officers “to grow in their careers by building expertise not only by managing people and resources” as many Silicon Valley companies do. (In practice, State promotion panels often reward such expertise despite State’s concurrent drive to defend its primacy in foreign policy making by copying some management practices better suited to the military.) It is reassuring to see contemporary suggestions for Foreign Service reform build on past experience. n George B. Lambrakis FSO, retired Pornic, France CORRECTIONS In the November Speaking Out, “Female, (Won’t) Curtail & Yale: Waiting to Exhale,” the late poet Audre Lorde’s first name is misspelled. In the “In Their Own Write” summary of Betrayal by a Father and the Power of Forgiveness , the author’s name is Rosa, not Rose. And in “Of Related Interest, ” the write- up on The Ambassadors , author Paul Richter covered the State Department for the Los Angeles Times , not The New York Times . We regret the errors. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION JUNE 2020 BRINGING #AMERI CANSHOME SILICON VALLEY LESSONS HUMAN RIGHTS DIPLOMACY EDUCATIONSUPPLEMENT INSIDE Ambassador (ret.) Michael McKinley’s July-August Speaking Out column (“Changing Mindsets on Race at State”), in which he testifies to some of his encounters with the racism entrenched within the Foreign Service. Yet he offers no shining counterexamples from his own career to rebut Amb. McKinley’s testimony. For his part, Amb. Hays complains that America should pay more attention to the looting and the destruction of property that occurred on the margins of some Black Lives Matter protests this summer. I join him in calling for the perpetrators of those crimes to be brought to justice. At the same time, I wonder why he and Mr. Hoover do not extend that same tender concern to the victims of police brutality, unjust imprisonment and, yes, systemic racism—both in American society and its institutions, including the Foreign Service. Steven Alan Honley Former FSO Washington, D.C. A Modern Workplace Despite my ignorance of tech, I was surprised and impressed by Andrew Moore’s “Practical Suggestions for a Modern Workplace” (Speaking Out, June), drawn from his experience at Google, as an Eagleburger Fellow no less. Several of his suggestions parallel and repeat my own nontech thoughts and those of others gleaned from our FS experience. One is for State to make long-term training desired and promotable so that officers stop avoiding it for fear it harms their promotion prospects—a cause that I, a former head of training assignments in career development, and others have long espoused.