The Future of the Foreign Affairs Workforce: Rebuilding Public Service

Thank you for joining us. My name is Peter Bergen, I'm a vice president at New America for global studies and fellows. We're really delighted having all-star cast to discuss the future of the foreign affairs workforce and uh this uh newspaper today, the FT, have said it pretty well, RIP the State Department. So, the question is is the uh State Department really RIP? Um we have Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, who is a fellow with the New America's uh future security program. She's also former deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and run she's executive director of Co-Action Global. We have Jenny Mattingly, who's a vice president for public policy and stakeholder engagement in the Partnership for Public Service. She also worked at OMB uh and various other parts of the federal government. And also Ambassador Eric Rubin, a long-time foreign service officer with 38 years of of service. Uh he most recently is the ambassador to American [clears throat] ambassador to Bulgaria. He's also he was uh served as the uh president of the American Foreign Service Association for 4 years from 2019 to 2023. So, I'm going to start with uh Dr. Campbell and uh our panelists will each make some brief opening remarks and then we'll have a discussion. If you have questions for the panel, please put it in the Slido uh and app in your box in your screen and I will um pass on the questions to our panelists. So, over to you, Dr. Campbell. >> Okay, thank you very much, Peter, um for having me. Thank you so much um for supporting and organizing this really important discussion. Um as everyone who lives and works in Washington knows, there is a variety of organizations, individuals, and efforts that are constantly thinking about policy, what is the best policy, how to advance policy, reform policy, change policy. And I would say in light of the dramatic you know generational sort of impact on US national security foreign policy institutions the most important policy discussion that should be taking place in Washington right now is the future of um of the workforce of foreign policy workforce of the civil servants and people are policy right so even when you have an administration like the current one who makes it very clear that the who who has stated that one of the many reasons why there has been such a massive reduction in force and major cuts is because they don't need people you know freely thinking or agendas of their own and they're only meant to follow the policy of the president sure I don't think anyone would disagree with that but it's the how when the president issues a policy of any kind in any area in any region in the world what you need behind that policy are people who know how to do it and that's where the expertise comes from it comes in a variety of ways it's not just knowing languages culture history of relationships but it's also about how you move assets how you operationalize things how you effectively deploy assistance to support and advance what the policy is that the president has set and so what we have now is a situation where the how how you implement any policy that this current administration or any future administration may set is has been destroyed in many cases completely obliterated in some cases the know-how of of doing things is simply no longer present I remember the feeling I had at some point last year when I went into the State Department an an institution or organization of course where I have worked and I deeply admire and walking out thinking like okay, the United States is now Denmark by which I mean the footprint has shrunk so considerably our ability to influence and to do the how to support whatever the president's policy is anywhere in the world is is simply no longer there. I think the situation is so grave that it absolutely take at least a generation to overcome should that be the direction in which we move forward. This is not something that an election cycle can fix. It is structural. It is serious and at the moment it is lacking any sense of bipartisan urgency or collaboration or coordination around what the future will be not only for the people currently serving in these institutions but for the generation of people that we would want to recruit and support into them and absent people absent a serious policy about building these organizations maintaining capacity you know throughout then we're going to simply have less impact less effect and be very ineffective in a wide variety of things that we may wish to do. I'll I'll stop there. >> Thank you Dr. Just to put some numbers on that quoting from today's FT article just for the audience to get a sense of what this all really looks like. Since the Trump second term began the workforce of the State Department has dropped by 3,000 over 20%. Trump has appointed fewer career diplomats than any president in the past 50 years just nine out of the 92 nominations he's put forward and the brunt of the cuts have happened in foreign affairs not in think not in items like contracting or administration. So, you really is as Dr. Campbell pointed out, losing the brains. I I I one thing I also wanted to mention about Dr. about Ambassador Rubin, from his Wikipedia entry, he speaks Thai, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Russian. So, that kind of linguistic ability and ability to operate in many different cultures has is really been pushed out the door. So, Jenny, over to you. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to be here today and just a big thank you starting off for all the folks who are listening in, who are either currently in federal service or had been in federal service because as we just heard, it's important. There's a lot of work that goes on that isn't you know, it's not things that just any company could do or any individual can do. It takes a lot of expertise and a lot of work network to do this sort of job. So, I'm here from the Partnership for Public Service. We're a non-partisan, non-profit working to make government better, particularly when you think about the policies and the structures around how government works. And you heard Dr. Campbell talk about the how we do our business. And so, that's certainly something we're focused on and that's everything from policy advocacy to leadership development to workforce programming and and working with practitioners who have been inside government because they know how government works best and they know where some of the blockers are to the policies and systems that work. I'm going to share a bit broader view of what we were just talking about than just the State Department, but really some of the same themes that we're seeing across government-wide that we're seeing go on. One of those is the deferred resignation program. Peter, you talked about um which how many people had left at State Department. Some of that's been through reduction of force, but some of it has been because people chose to um [clears throat] walk out the door through this deferred resignation or early retirement. And we're seeing that continue, this cycle of just loss of expertise, loss of capacity in agencies. We're also seeing agencies start quietly hiring back in an acknowledgement that the work is still there. The work has to get done. It's important. And so I think that's a uh thing we'll start seeing going forward. We're also seeing people in agencies get pulled from their jobs that they do normally to cover the work that still has to be done. Because once even as the administration removed people, a correlation in the type of work that needed to be done didn't happen. That work is still required through Congress, through the administration, through a variety of other things. Um there's been about 450,000 uh separations across government since January 2025. So, it's not just State Department, but we're seeing this in the other agencies that State Department works with. Um partners across government, this loss of capacity. Uh one other thing I'll point out is that there is also we did a public service viewpoint survey last year where we at the end of last year, where we surveyed employees on how they feel about their work in agencies in their agencies, and it showed that a majority of employees think that the service delivery, their ability to do their work on behalf of the public has gotten worse over the past year because they don't have the capacity to do this type of um activity in meaningful ways. And so it really does impact communities across the country or internationally as well. And we also do trust in government surveys. And right now, trust continues to drop in the federal government. It was already low, but their 2025 survey showed that 33% of Americans trust the government. Which is a pretty low number, and that's just compounded when they don't get services, when they, you know, phones don't get answered on the other end. All of these day-to-day things that happen when agencies don't have the capacity to do their work. Um we're also seeing a lot of executive orders and regulations. We track a lot of these things and their impact on government capacity. It's coming from the administration and the Office of Personnel Management that are you probably heard Schedule PC, which is the former Schedule F. There are things around suitability to do your work. Uh moving appeals processes into the Office of Personnel Management. Each of these is part of this workforce restructuring that makes it easier to fire federal employees without cause. And so our concern has been, you know, one you need to clearly remove employees when they're not doing the work they need to be doing, but you also want to make sure there are guardrails preventing politicization of the workforce. And so that's something we're watching right now is how many of these actions have the impact of politicizing potentially the workforce. Uh there is a silver lining. Dr. Campbell mentioned needing to fix some of those systems, and that's something that we and many others across government are working on is how can you reimagine government systems, hiring, uh procurement, IT. Think about the business of government. Those systems weren't necessarily working optimally before. Some of them were completely outdated. And so this is a moment where things have been changed so drastically that we, whether it's in Congress, in the external stakeholders, folks inside government, might have an opportunity to think how can we make them work better and what does that look like. And so I do think that that's the positive side of the coin, the takeaway here is that we have a moment where people are paying attention to government in a way that hasn't happened in a very, very long time, particularly in Congress, in a way um digging in and thinking about what they can do to modernize the statutes that govern the workforce and govern operations. So, that's certainly something we can dig into more, but Peter, I'll stop there and that's sort of the big picture of of what things stand right now. >> Okay, thank you, Jenny. Ambassador Rubin. >> Uh thank you, Peter. I'm really glad to be with everyone here today. Um I will endorse everything my colleagues have just said and add a little bit. Uh I think what we are seeing now is an intentional effort to destroy uh US diplomacy as it has existed for over a century. Uh I think there are several reasons for that and they're mostly ideological, but but not entirely and I'll go into that, but I think uh as the partnership has has said uh over the years on many occasions, uh we had a a period in the 19th century when uh we had a spoils system and this was, I think, dramatized superbly in the recent Netflix uh series Death by Lightning about uh the assassination of President Garfield by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed job seeker. Uh and in the late 19th century, we saw a real change. Uh Teddy Roosevelt, who allegedly is one of President Trump's role models, uh led the charge first in New York City, in New York State, and then nationally to reform the civil service to create apolitical career professional institutions across government. And for the past century plus, that is is what we've had, for better or for worse, not always perfectly, but in the case of the Foreign Service, going back to 1924 and the founding of the modern Foreign Service, uh the entire concept has been a professional uh, career institution, apolitical, uh, dedicated to serving whatever administration is in office, uh, to the best of its ability. And I think the track record, uh, of that century is is pretty positive with with the occasional, uh, I would say asterisks. Uh, one of them was during the 1950s and the McCarthy period and uh, the question of who lost China and that was a very difficult time for the Foreign Service when people were hounded and persecuted for allegedly not uh, having opposed the communist takeover of China sufficiently strongly. But, uh, overall, I would say, uh, it's a it's a very uh, positive tradition and having spent almost 40 years in the Foreign Service, I can tell you that, uh, never once in my career did I ever hear or see anyone, uh, trying to undercut or undermine or not fulfill the policies of an elected president of the United States and I I served six presidents and, uh, the question that has been raised by this administration is is it possible to be apolitical and to loyally serve, uh, any administration. Uh, and I know the answer to that to be yes. Uh, unfortunately, this administration has decided to reject that notion, to politicize an apolitical institution, to drive people out, uh, I would argue to uh, drive people out because they have experience and knowledge. Uh, this is an anti, uh, experience, anti-knowledge administration where the most important thing is not to have anyone who knows better than the people in charge, not to have anyone who will say privately, confidentially, internally, uh I recommend we don't do that. I recommend something else. Here's why. Uh they do not want to hear that. They're very insecure uh partly because the overall level of knowledge and competence is very low. And that's evidenced by the people carrying out our foreign policy uh such as uh Witkoff and Kushner who have no diplomatic experience or knowledge whatsoever. Um but it's a great loss to the country. And if you want to ask why we're in such a bad place with Iran right now, uh I I think uh a key point is that there's not a single person who knows Iran, who understands the history of US relations with Iran, who is following things in Iran closely, who speaks Farsi, >> [snorts] >> uh not a single person who is advising uh the policy of this administration. And in terms of the exodus from the foreign service, there's no doubt that the goal has been to drive out uh pretty much everyone who's senior, everyone who has experience, everyone who might internally, confidentially recommend uh different approaches, which is the role of of career uh experts, not to go public, not to ever challenge an administration publicly, uh but to internally provide their best advice, and then obviously when the policy decisions are made to follow them. Uh so, the question remains, what are we going to do in 2029? We are going to have to rebuild, we're going to have to rethink. Uh we're a country of 345 million. We are still the most powerful country on Earth. We are going to need diplomacy, we are going to need diplomats, we are going to need foreign policy decision-making. Uh right now uh that has been gutted, but we're going to have to reinvent and rethink uh and uh restart. And hopefully it can be done in a way that takes into account mistakes that were made in the past. Uh, it will take have to take into account things that needed changing for years. Uh, no one argues that what we had before the second Trump administration was was entirely uh, effective or positive. And we're going to have to, I think, rely on people who have been driven out, uh, and hope that some of them can come back and and share their decades of experience and knowledge. Uh, but again, I would just argue, uh, we don't need politicized diplomacy. We don't need politicized federal institutions. Uh, and it's not true to say that in the past, uh, our career professional experts were undermining any president's agenda. But right now what we have is a gutted institution. It's definitely showing in terms of the failure of US diplomacy around the world. Uh, within 2 years, uh, we're going to face the challenge of figuring where we go next, and I'd be happy to talk more about that, uh, in the Q&A. Thanks. >> Thank you, Ambassador Rubin. Just to pick up on that point, I interviewed Kiron Skinner, who, um, she was the head of policy planning at State, uh, in the first Trump term, and she wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the State Department. I asked her, could she point to a single example of a foreign service officer not, you know, basically going along with whatever the instructions were from were from, uh, you know, the White House in the Trump first term, and she said that she couldn't think of think of an example. So, the whole the whole it it's predicated in part on this idea that there's this fifth column at the State Department that isn't going along with these the directives of the president, which is basically, you know, she couldn't point to a single example. And just to add to to that, you know, the Assistant Secretary for the Middle East has still not been appointed. Joel Rayburn, a former New America fellow, uh at a Trump uh you know, very Trump loyalist uh wasn't um confirmed and that post remains open. At all the times you'd want a senior the top level um expert on the Middle East to have you you know, to be the for that role to be filled, you know, it is now for all the reasons Ambassador Rubin has already laid out. Anyway, we have a lot of questions from the audience. I'm just going to go straight to them um and uh first of all, um question from anonymous. Uh Well, I should ask this. Question from Allegro. I was I was riffed, meaning uh fired, from a very junior role last year. I still want to serve. How do I best prepare to come back so that I'll be able to lead when I get back? Maybe that's a question for you, Jenny. >> Yeah, that's a That's an interesting question and one of the first things is that I hear from so many federal employees, they weren't done yet with their careers in uh public service, so they do want to come back. They want to continue serving the mission and serving their country. So, uh you know, the interesting thing is we just don't know how hiring is going to go over the next year and what opportunities to come back are in there. They're changing the hiring process a little bit right now and so I think there's nothing that's a magic uh you know, uh wave a magic wand and be prepared to come back in. There is, you know, supposed to be skills-based hiring. Agencies are supposed to be moving towards you show your skills and qualifications for a job through assessments and other things. And so, some of this is just looking out for positions that you might want to uh apply for again. I will caveat that with something that Ambassador Rubin was talking about, which is there is this uh thought that the folks who left already you know, this perception that people were in government who were not being politically responsive, which just isn't the case. Folks have worked across administrations and the the point of a career civil service is to be that non-partisan uh uh cadre that executes on on all the work that needs to be done. But, there are questions being asked related to uh some of the hiring processes around which executive orders do you most support from this administration and some other things. So, just be aware that parts of it are going to be hiring as as we're normally used to seeing that a lot of us support about skills-based hiring, showing your qualifications, but there's also an added layer potentially now where hiring goes in front of a a board of political appointees, there are some other questions in there. And so, there's nothing there's nothing sort of different in terms of preparing to come back, but I do think we will see more positions start opening over the next few years. >> Okay, so this is a question from Michael Duffin who's a RIF'd, I E fired. Reduction in force is RIF for those who don't know on this listening to this, a former counterterrorism official. He uh he he asks, and maybe this is a question for Ambassador Rubin, if Congress passed legislation to reinstate the 1,300-plus State Department employees who were fired last year year, do you think the Trump administration would actually allow them to return to Foggy Foggy Bottom or would they be put on administrative leave? >> Um thanks for that question. I think uh the answer unfortunately is very clear. We have existing law that is very clear. One of them says that if people are uh fired under reduction in force, if they're laid off, uh by definition that is not for cause. By definition, that is for uh reasons of efficiency, economy, uh reducing staffing, and the law says that people who are riffed have first priority in being considered uh for new hiring. And this administration has recently announced that it is going to uh be launching uh a new hiring campaign for the State Department, but it's also made very clear that no one who was riffed will be considered uh for rehiring uh during uh this new initiative, and that is explicitly illegal. That is totally contrary to the law because people who are riffed, by definition, were not riffed for cause. Uh people who are fired for cause are fired for cause. It Obviously does not happen often in the career service, but it certainly happens, and um the laws are clear on that. Uh this is true also of the thousands of people who lost their jobs when the US Agency for International Development was shut down, I would argue also illegally. Um so, I'm afraid I would have to say for the next 2 years, 2-plus years under this administration, I would be surprised if anyone who is riffed is able to return uh to federal service. Uh but the hope and expectation, and it's something that I'm working on with many colleagues and uh many organizations is to come up with strategies for 2 and 1/2 years from now, for the next administration, whatever that next administration is, and to say, "We're We need this talent. We need this uh group of dedicated, patriotic people who were not done, who were not ready to leave federal service, who had a lot more to give." Uh and how do we bring them back? How do we make that process work? Um if the question is why is this administration so opposed to bringing people back, I think the answer is there there is a broad assumption that anyone who is serving the federal government on the day that uh Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president uh is almost by definition disloyal and uh politically opposed to the policies and goals of the current administration. And that is a very uh I would say false and uh unfortunate assumption that is not justified by by any facts or any experience, but I think that is the assumption. So I I I think from the perspective of this administration, their attitude is without knowing anything really personally about the people who were riffed or the people who lost their jobs when USAID shut down, there's just an assumption that they're all people who are not uh supportive of this president and therefore considering bringing them back is not something they're willing to do. Again, without any individual knowledge or uh specifics about any individual former federal employees track record or uh work experience. Um hopefully this too shall pass uh within uh two plus years uh and we'll see return to what I would call uh fact-based and experience-based employment. Uh but it's tough out there and I can say I personally know many people who have not found new employment since they lost their federal jobs, who want to serve, who have literally, if you put everyone together who was riffed, thousands of years of experience and knowledge and education uh and um they're ready to to continue to serve. How we make that happen is one of the challenges we're going to be facing in the coming years. >> Just a very quick follow-up on that, Ambassador Reuben. So, um if the House was taken by the the Democrats in on November 3rd, and if the Senate was, would any of this change? >> Um I don't think so. I mean, what would change, obviously, and we all know that, is there would be hearings and there would be subpoenas, and the administration would be challenged to justify the people it has rift, to justify the closure of USAID, to justify uh all the uh I would say negative changes that have been made uh in many cases unthinkingly and and irresponsibly. But, there's no way that the Congress can force an administration to hire, there's no way that the Congress can uh revisit uh for example, the closure of USAID in a positive way. It It can can hold hearings. It could ask questions. Uh but, uh honestly, at this point, I think what we have to do is plan for and and I I know people are working on this. I you you mentioned Project 2025 and uh the Heritage Foundation and Kiron Skinner, and and I confess having worked on a project to examine Project 2025 before the election, uh we didn't realize that Project 2025 was just the the appetizer, just the beginning. Uh it's gone so much further than that, but we need a Project 2029. And there are people working on that now, not just for US diplomacy, the State Department, the Foreign Service, but across all of government, across all of policy, so that on the first day that the next president takes office, uh there are ideas, there are plans, uh and uh the damage can start to be undone, but but not bringing things back to the status quo ante. We can't go back and we shouldn't go back. We need to reinvent, rethink, do things better. Uh, and and I think we can. But that has to happen now and it is starting to happen. I think it needs to accelerate. >> Dr. Campbell, so what would a project 2029 look like or what what should it look like? Not just for the State Department, but also for all the expertise that existed in USAID and all the the different bureaus within the State Department that have sort of been closed or effectively neutered or had What What are the things you'd want to bring back? And also, you know, this doesn't I mean, look, it could be a J.D. Vance administration, right? It's if there's no there's no we don't know what administration will be, but uh, there there is a world in which the Republican administration would be less um, skeptical or less destructive of these governmental structures. So, what would you want to see brought back or improved because we all agree that it wasn't perfect before? >> Yeah, I mean, it's a big question, Peter. So, I'll just start by saying a few things. I mean, I agree fully with Ambassador Reuben's last point, which is no one should be talking about going back or reinstating things that were destroyed as as the future. So, we have to be thinking about where we are as an opportunity to do a number of things that frankly were very difficult to do previously. There's been such mass disruptions, so we must think about it as an opportunity. So, off the top of my head, um, I I would just, you know, start very in a very sort of big picture perspective. Where does diplomacy as an institution, as a practice, um, sit vis-a-vis the other national security institutions. Um we need to think about what we want it to be in the next 25 years. We have to think much longer term than um a two-year or four-year election cycle. What is the vision? Where do we want to be? Where do we want our presence to be? Where do we want the expertise to be? Um what types of people do we want um with what types of uh of skills and experiences? Um I I think we really have to start talking about that question. And where does multilateralism, broadly um speaking, sit within the institution of diplomacy? The State Department historically has really been a bilateral institution, um but most of our biggest global challenges are multilateral. So, I think we have to kind of start with some of those big questions, and we have to think very long term. We have to think what we are building over the next 25 years, and the types of people and skills and experience we want to attract toward that vision. And whatever happens, none of this is sustainable or possible or achievable absent some serious work on developing a bipartisan um agreement and support around this, including especially with the US Congress. Otherwise, we are ping-ponging um in ways that are unhealthy, unhelpful, and we're truly, you know, cutting our nose to spite ourselves if we if we don't build that back. I would say another area is thinking um about public-private partnerships, not as a separate office adjacent to somewhere in the State Department, but as core to everything that um the State Department is doing uh around the world, and thinking about how those two pieces go together. The third area where I think um in some ways the way that some Trump officials have articulated this, I would agree with, and that is more effectively matching the money we deploy, foreign assistance broadly speaking, with the policy outcome we intend to achieve. For various reasons, because of the complexity and the sheer size of the US government. Um I and many others would argue that these two things started operating in in parallel systems, right? The money is approved appropriated by Congress and um you know, the policy sometimes was operating um separately from that. So, I think there's a lot of work to do to think about using money much more strategically, um much more effectively, tying it much closer to the intended policy outcome versus sort of um just having certain things on rinse repeat um doing the same thing um over and over again without really in a passive way. Um so, there's a lot of work uh to be done there. I've never understood and maybe this I'll just make this last point and there's many other points that could be made. Um I've never understood at all under any administration why the United States doesn't invest more seriously and centrally across the African continent. If you look at um resources, if you look at um demographics, if you look at emerging economies, uh much of the future um sits there. And under repeated administrations for the um last many years, um we've divested and now to a point where it's just absurd. I don't think I mean, there's just a few ambassadors um across that entire continent. Um we've kind of just left it um without any American engagement. So, that's something I think I would work to absolutely change dramatically um and I would put a lot more expertise and and um capacity toward that. Um maybe the last thing I would say is it's it's beyond obvious that um whatever is rebuilt, we have to seriously rethink um the entirety of our Middle East policy and posture and where and who is involved in policy considerations um on that whole piece, which seems to be where an area where we may have in fact a lot of uh bipartisan agreement and I would like to see that rebuilt in a way that is completely different than how it's been managed historically. >> This is a question from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service Career Center. A multi multi-pronged question. Any updates on commercial service officer hiring, State Department fellowships such as Pickering, Rangel, Clark, Colin Powell leadership program, State Department internship program in all caps. So many students and alumni want to know. Thank you. >> I can take some of that at least. In terms of the Pickering and Rangel fellowship programs which were congressionally chartered programs designed to essentially create the equivalent of ROTC for the Foreign Service to bring in some of the best and brightest graduate students across the country and to offer uh essentially free tuition and and scholarships in exchange for a commitment to join the Foreign Service and other aspects of training. Those are currently I would use the term suspended in the sense that people who have graduated from those programs are still being brought into the Foreign Service, are still joining. I think that's the good news. The bad news is no one else is being brought into the programs. There's no new class for the current year. I don't expect anyone to be brought into those programs before the end of this president's term, but the programs are chartered by Congress. They exist. They're funded. And and it's very important that we look ahead to essentially restarting those programs and meanwhile making sure that the people who made commitments to public service uh able to to serve. And uh as I said, it it could be worse in the sense that a majority of the people who have already completed these uh programs and completed their their master's programs uh are gradually being brought into the Foreign Service. So, that needs to happen more. In terms of overall hiring, uh there's been a lot of changes to hiring that are not transparent. Uh the Foreign Service uh officer test, the written exam as it's called, has been changed in ways that are not clear because there's been no uh public discussion of that. Uh the entire recruitment office at the State Department uh was fired. There is very little official recruitment going on now. Uh it's uh uh sort of a joke, but it's not funny that the only recruitment going on is at Hillsdale College and Liberty University. Uh and um unfortunately, that's not a joke. That's almost literally the case. And uh there have been specific outreach efforts to those two institutions where overall there's there's really no outreach or recruiting going on uh officially at all. Uh I think uh the Foreign Service is uh definitely going to survive this. And again, I I come back uh to what Dr. Campbell was discussing discussing. We need to think what comes next and to do it better and to do it more effectively. Um but I would argue that in terms of hiring, the State Department's the Foreign Service uh was doing pretty well before uh things really fell apart uh 2 years ago. Uh in terms of real diversity and and without stereotyping diversity, I can tell you that when I joined the Foreign Service in the mid-1980s, it was a much less representative, much less diverse institution than it is now. And that includes geographic diversity, it includes professional diversity, people coming from all walks of life. Uh we need to get back to that idea. And um I I I'm sorry to say, but I think it's true that uh this administration actually uh in its efforts to to shut down what it calls D I A uh really is uh looking at going back to uh the not so good past in terms of uh a focus on hiring white males. Uh and the idea that there there was discrimination against white males, which I can assure you was was never the case in the foreign service as it generally has not been the case in government as a whole. So, again, rethinking is going to be necessary. The most important thing for me personally and and for my colleagues who've who've been trying informally to recruit people is is to capture the patriotic dedicated people who really want to serve and who really want to be diplomats representing our country and not to drive them away, not to make them think that it's hopeless or that they're not welcome. Um and I I think we're doing that. And as I say to people you know, it's it's easy to say this too shall pass, but it will. And meanwhile, we're a country of 345 million. We're the most powerful country on Earth still. We need diplomacy. We need diplomats. We need the best people uh who want to serve. And um and we've got to just keep our focus on that. >> We have a ton of uh questions from the audience. So, I'm going to This is from Julia Shafer, a retired federal worker. And maybe a question for you, Jenny. What organizations who are engaged in Project 2029 work? >> I I there's no There's no one organization. I know there are are some groups that are talking about project 2029, but I would I would zoom out and say there's a broader effort among a huge growing network of organizations that care about how government works either from state you know, state department specific to other agency specific and then a lot of organizations who maybe care about cross-cutting functions and how government works how contracting works how technology works how human capital works in government and those organizations are all working on what I would say broadly the term that we use and that I've heard my colleagues on the uh video here say too is reimagining government systems from whatever perspective they come from and some of these are bipartisan efforts too. And so there's really if you think about you know, traditional organizations that have been in the good government space partnership for public service. There are groups now like protect democracy civil service strong some of the groups like AFSA which I know some of you all might be members of the unions for federal employees. There's groups like senior executive association. You name it. There are organizations that are thinking about whatever slice of government making it work better that are jumping on this opportunity to really try to reimagine that. I don't know there may be some efforts to do a more coordinated project 2029 in that sense, but I do know like we're our initiative at the partnership is called government for a new era making government more effective responsive accountable. And so we and others will have policy options for Congress to consider options for a new incoming administration through transition and then options for agencies as well because Congress is only a piece of the a There are groups thinking about that, but a lot of what is going on right now, and also what agencies can do in the future, can be done within agencies. So, really thinking about how do we set up new political appointees, career leaders, others to understand how to make government work better. That's going to be something that a lot of these groups are thinking about as well. So, there's not one place >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to I mean, it would be kind of a trap if Project 2029 is sort of seen as simply a a re-versioning of the Heritage Project of you know, and and an explicitly government in waiting, here's our plan. I mean, you can do that, but if that if that's the only thing on offer, I think that's a trap. >> And I think too, the point was made if we are just going in a cycle of every new administration coming in and redoing how government works, moving out employees, that was the spoils system, right? Fire everybody, bring in your own folks. That's not good for how we do business. That's not the long-term fix. So, yes, I think that's the that is why people are trying to find this broader fix government. For folks on the phone on the listening in, we and others do have volunteer intake forms for folks who want to give their perspective on how to make government work better because again, those of you who have worked in the system know where it was broken in the first place and probably have a lot of ideas of how to fix it. So, that's the other trap I think would be everybody on the outside thinking they have all the answers without bringing in the folks who know how changes get implemented. >> And of course, State Department and other agencies are hiring, but they're hiring contractors. What is the what are the plusses and minuses of that, Jeanne? >> Well, you know, again, that's a not necessarily a stable workforce if it's contractors. It's you know, it also costs a lot more money for government agencies to bring in contract workforce. I think that's one short-term fix, but it also prevents maybe it takes the pressure valve off of actually fixing hiring or bringing in the right skill sets. And so, I just see that type of hiring is a short-term solution that's doesn't get at the broader issues. >> Dr. Campbell, you've spent your much of your career um in you working with refugees, dealing with humanitarian catastrophes. Obviously, USAID, as we all know, you know, essentially got completely axed. Parts of it I my may have been [clears throat] subsumed into the State Department. And And by the way, there may not be anything wrong with that, right? You know, the British government DFID, which was the equivalent of USAID, migrated into the Foreign Office and became uh so, there might have been an argument uh I mean, obviously, that wasn't the Trump's team's intention, but just reflect a little bit on what kind of what you think the outcome of all that was. Was there an an argument to bring it into state? Um uh and uh what do you you know, what are the long longer-term repercussions of all this? >> Yeah. I mean, there's there have been arguments for and against around that question now um across multiple administrations for a very long time. I don't necessarily think that there is a right answer. Um what has been lost clearly aside from the human beings who no longer work for the US government and their expertise um is the unique capabilities that USAID had that the State Department does not have, cannot build, and did not um transfer over. Uh so, take for example the recent devastating earthquake in Venezuela. Um this current administration had a very strong interest in responding. Um they did so a little bit, um but it was a pretty weak uh response with very little capacity, very little resources, very little personnel, and none of the unique capabilities that USAID had in terms of teams on the ground in the region, in country, with expertise, um coordinating with a variety of other uh local, regional, and global actors, and ability to respond quickly, civil-military coordination, um information flows, moving money very quickly, knowing how to move that money, but importantly knowing how to oversee and responsibly manage the those that money. Um all of those capabilities are completely gone, which is why you'll see an over-reliance as we go forward on the military, which is not a humanitarian response provider, extremely expensive, will cost the taxpayer, you know, 100 times more than what any civilian uh organization uh can do. So, those capacities are gone, and I don't think there's a future where the State Department will be able to um build them back. What they can do, which is ironic given um the stated goals of um of the the destruction of aid and the future of where the administration wants to go, is they can cut big checks to the United Nations, which is exactly what they're doing. Um so, that that doesn't get us closer to oversight, it doesn't get us more local, it doesn't get us necessarily more uh efficient or effective, and it cuts out the role that the United States used to essentially play in disaster response globally because we're we're not present, we don't have the people. Um so, we basically sift through information that other people, foreigners, uh give to us um to make assessments about what's happening. There's one other point though I just want to make um about this issue that is extremely concerning and something that we really have to spend a lot of time thinking about as we go forward. Um all administrations talk about American values, they talk about um the special characteristics of our country, um of why it is that we've obtained the the level of power and strength that we have um over time. Some a portion of those values historically has always been um our commitment to international law including international humanitarian law, restraint, constraining our power, exercising compassion again in in support of civilians, doing things that may not be nakedly in our transactional self-interest but from the from using sort of soft power are important to us and have always been important to us. That has been completely destroyed and is no longer functioning. There is no such thing as international United States does not advance international humanitarian law in in my opinion, is no longer part of the global multilateral consensus decision-making around that and it does not seem to be a value really that we are seeking to uphold and to try to extend in other places. So I think you know yes, the question about institutions and capabilities and money, that's important but what's the most important question is what is the norm around which we are organizing ourselves. Why are we doing these things? What is the relevance of soft power? Why is it a necessary component of US foreign affairs national security. This is a very important question and again a defining one and something that I think that anyone working on the future of the State Department or related agencies needs to be thinking about as we move forward. Again, not over the next four years but the next 25 years. >> Yeah. Um question from Bert, it's an interesting one. Um essentially sort of saying that if you were at headquarters you were more likely to be fired. Um and there are plenty of sort of mid-level foreign service officers who sort of serving overseas who are not haven't been part of the firings. Are they um what are you you know, are they the going to be the next sort of generation of leaders? I mean, is that is that really true that people who are serving overseas were less likely to get uh fired, Ambassador Rubin? >> Well, the the RIFs, the reductions in force, uh were I I have to say I can only use the term uh mindless and um insane because they were not based on the extensive uh regulations and uh laws that apply to reductions in force. Uh for one thing, they're they're supposed to be based on a system where people are ranked in terms of their uh personal uh effectiveness and success. Uh second of all, they're supposed to be based uh on reductions in areas that are no longer needed. And what happened here, partly because it was coming on the heels of the DOS effort, which at the State Department included uh encouraging people uh to leave voluntarily, uh whether or not they were needed. And to to incentivize that, um people were, it is true, generally RIF'd if they were in domestic positions in the US, not just Washington, but in the United States, based on where they were serving at the time. And in terms of the civil service, um maybe that makes some sense because civil servants in the federal government have permanent positions that they uh serve in until and unless they change their positions. But Foreign Service officers, like military officers, uh rotate positions every few years. And it's a career service uh based on what we call rank in person, like the military. You have a rank, and you are assigned various positions, and every few years you do something else based on your rank and your capabilities. And what they did is they said, you know, for example, um anyone who has worked on uh DEIA efforts, uh we're going to riff. Well, you know, first of all, people did not choose to work on anything. They were assigned to work on things. And there were people who during their careers at one point or another worked on uh diversity efforts uh because that was what their job description required. Second of all, they they said, we don't need all these people uh working to resettle refugees in the United States because we're not going to resettle refugees in the United States. So, people who were in our uh population, refugees and migration bureau uh suffered a large number of riffs even though the foreign service people there were just on temporary assignments. Uh and um and the same thing was true in our human rights and democracy bureau because that's been de-emphasized as well. Um but the the idea that people are identified with the work they're doing at any particular moment when what they're doing is carrying out the policies of the US government uh was was deeply flawed, and we lost a lot of really great talent. There was really very little attention paid to um uh evaluations of people who were riffed. Uh there was no sense that people being riffed uh were were people who we didn't want to have in your minute. It was just a numbers game. And so, that's why for one thing I'm I feel very strongly that we need to come up with mechanisms to bring people back who want to come back who were let go for nothing related to their performance or their capabilities. Um in terms of people who do want to come back, however, as I said earlier, I think it's going to have to wait a couple of years because uh for whatever reason this administration has basically said they're not going to consider people who were rifts or who were were forced to retire resign for re-hiring and and that's I think both illegal and wrong but that's the situation we're in. >> Well, we have 5 minutes left so there's a comment from Rodney and then maybe each of you could address it. It kind of gets to the heart of a lot of things we've just been So he's a former USAID he was his he was fired his position was advertised he can't apply he can't encourage people to join the State Department you know so all picking up on what Dr. Ambassador Rubin said you know it's going to take 2 years but like in the meantime a lot of people have just resigned full stop and maybe gone into another field or maybe taken early retirement or whatever so and and then if you're a young person it's like well why would I join these and it's also not true just of the State Department it's true in the intelligence community and a lot of other parts of the government. So starting with you Jenny like how do you deal with the fact that there's a you know there's a four-year sort of generation of people both that maybe older and younger who may just say hey this is just not worth it. >> I think it's going to be hard for people wanting to come in the government that are younger and to convince them that to keep holding on to the idea of doing public service and that was a challenge even before this administration. I mean it's about 7% of the workforce has been under the age of 30 certain agencies certainly had more of a pipeline coming in from different places you know foreign service certainly did intelligence community some others but it was a challenge before and so I think that is one of those things if people can't get in now they can come in mid-career, they can come in at senior levels. So, when we reimagine government, how do we make it easier for folks to get in because hiring was tough in the first place, particularly in the civilian hiring side. It was really a black box for people trying to figure out how to get into government. And so, I think that's where the opportunity piece is is let's streamline that and make it easier. And then, for those of us who really understand the importance of public service to keep talking about what government does cuz it's a moment when the public is paying attention more. So, this is a moment, even if people can't get in, to help them understand why government matters and why they should consider a career in public service at any time in their, you know, career journey. >> Dr. Campbell. >> My answer is is simple that if if we want a skilled, talented workforce of young people who desire to have a career in public service, we have to have a politics that believes that the government is an asset and that it does things that are important for Americans and for American global standing. If we don't have that politics, we will not have the workforce that I think many of us here today would like to see. >> Dr. Master Reuben. >> Um, yeah, I would endorse what Dr. Campbell just said. We need a positive vision of public service and I know it personally from my own experience. There are so many people who who really uh did what they did and and want to do uh public service because of a commitment to that ideal. And uh we want people to to see that uh as their future. Uh again, we can't go back to exactly what we have had and we don't want to. Uh we've got to rethink and reinvent, but the most important thing is to give a vision to people who want to serve their country uh who want to be diplomats, uh who want to be development workers, all the other things that uh that need doing, that uh they're wanted and the career before them is is something that they can uh aspire to do for a full career, uh which right now is is problematic to convince people of that. So, uh having that positive vision and then making it concrete, making it real is is I think the challenge. Um I think it is uh realistic. I also think it's essential. So, that's our challenge for the next few years. >> Well, thank you to the audience uh for tuning in and thank you to Jenny Mattingly, Dr. Campbell, and Ambassador Reuben for a really expert discussion of these issues. Um and a a virtual clap from the audience uh that I'm communicating. So, thank you all and uh hopefully uh well, we'll we'll have better news in the coming years. >> Thank you. >> So much.