Twenty-five years ago, I went to India as a newly minted Foreign Service officer. After three months of Hindi language training, I was interviewing up to 200 visa applicants a day. After that, I served in Africa, Europe, and Asia, going from junior officer to running a post.
I love my country and was proud to serve it as a diplomat. America has flaws, to be sure, and its story has some shameful chapters, but I’ve seen firsthand that we compare favorably to any other country and system of government on Earth. Nowhere does an individual — no matter his or her background — have more opportunity to succeed than in the United States.
That is why I fear the State Department’s increasing turn toward ideology and partisanship. The United States needs competent, politically neutral servants prepared to carry out the policies of elected officials. But the State Department’s recent diversion from merit to “equity” undermines principles that took 200 years to establish.
Race essentialists such as Ibram X. Kendi believe that any disparity in the representation of races in any organization is proof of discrimination. They ignore obvious factors that can explain group differences — not just ability, but individual effort, family structure and support, and other traits of successful cultures from every continent.
Nonetheless, their conception of “equity” has captured American education and government, including the State Department. In 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken established an Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, led by a new chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO), and devised an “Equity Action Plan” to redirect U.S. diplomacy.
Since then, the CDIO has relentlessly pursued preferential hiring to ensure that the Foreign Service “looks like America.” But in truth, nothing in America “looks like America.” Sports, business, entertainment, medicine, the military — in no sphere of our national life will you find sex and race percentages perfectly in line with the population as a whole. In a free society, people choose, compete, and sort naturally.
There is another kind of imagined society, where all theoretically end in the same place. But every example of that, from Cuba to North Korea, shows the same pattern: People are poorer, less free, and still ruled by a privileged elite. At least in a capitalist, free society, that elite is mostly created by individual talent, hard work, and good decisions.
Like Kendi, State Department proponents of “equity” claim there are “systemic” barriers to the hiring and advancement of certain groups. However, data over the past few years shows that women were promoted more than men, and black officers at a higher rate than white or Asian officers. Nonetheless, the State Department continues to proceed as if such barriers existed. The State Department-USAID Joint Regional Strategy claims that “systemic inequality is a ‘national security threat,’” without any evidence.
Claims by journalists and former Foreign Service officers that the State Department has a hostile climate for some so-called minorities are also not borne out by facts. Last year, there were only two findings of discrimination among approximately 25,000 U.S. staff in the civil and foreign services — that’s one case per every 12,500 employees. Yet the department’s Bureau of Global Talent Management (HR) spends nearly $80 million a year on an endless array of equity-obsessed training programs, with no evidence that they improve the workforce, much less American diplomacy.
In just the last several months, for example, GTM offered staff a half day of work time to take a course on “Intersectional Gender Analysis Training,” which “explores how gender and systems of power shape an individual’s lived experience”; paid one consultant what was likely a very large fee to lecture staff on the dubious concept of “implicit” bias; and sponsored another course on “equity in journalism” — by a supposed expert whose background, she says, is “not in journalism” but “community building and education and organizing.” The State Department also supported a staff-organized event limited “only for women of color.”
In 2022, the department deemphasized the objective Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) to make hiring “more equitable.” Now a Qualification Evaluations Panel combines the test score with essays and other subjective judgments to determine who moves forward in the hiring process. This mirrors the approach of universities, law, and medical schools, which use nebulous “holistic” assessments of candidates to admit them despite low test scores. This may ensure “equitable” outcomes, but it also generates a weaker intake of officers, which will reduce the effectiveness of American diplomacy.
All societies need elites. Whether for pilots, brain surgeons, or special forces, at some point an objective standard must be met if we are to maintain excellence. For the State Department, the solution is to restore the FSOT as a requirement and make personnel decisions that are blind to immutable characteristics. Every Foreign Service officer I’ve ever met supports efforts to attract talent from across the nation regardless of the “type” of American who provides that talent.
Repairing our educational system and strengthening families to increase opportunities for all is in the national interest. But making decisions about hiring, promotion, or who gets what assignment based on race and sex instead of merit and experience is a mistake.
Like many other Foreign Service officers, I’ve visited and lived in societies riven by racial or tribal struggles for power and wealth. That zero-sum game never ends well and should not be the system we emulate. Instead, we should celebrate the American values of equal opportunity, competition, and merit, which made our country and its institutions the envy of the planet.
