What is the role of American diplomacy in

What is the role of American diplomacy in the world today?

Eight alumni who have charted careers in the United States Foreign Service—from the Class of 1977 through the Class of 2014—reflect on their experiences of representing American ideals and American interests across the world.

The views expressed in the following reflections are the authors’ own, expressed in a personal capacity, and not necessarily reflective of those of the U.S. government or Department of State.

Mark Storella ’77

Professor of Practice of Diplomacy at Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies, after serving as a senior diplomat with experience on five continents, retiring with the rank of Minister Counselor

The role of U.S. diplomacy is to advance the interests of the American people, and the genius of America’s engagement in the world has been our enlightened approach: identifying American security with the safety of our allies; American prosperity with our partners’ economic development; and American freedom with the health of democracy around the world.

American diplomats work to advance human rights globally while balancing U.S. interests, recognizing that we cannot always be consistent and that we ourselves continue to strive toward our Constitution’s goal of a more perfect union. How do American diplomats translate that into action on human rights? I would boil it down to three things: principles, process, and people.

Principles: When the United States joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009, I was Chargé d’Affaires at our Mission in Geneva where the Council is based. We understood that member states joined the Council to serve their national interests—many to defend freedom, but others to shield themselves from Council scrutiny for their own abysmal human rights practices.

Our team fought to maintain the integrity of human rights principles and call out offenders. This is a frustrating but worthwhile endeavor. Sometimes this work produces positive results that improve people’s lives; sometimes all you can do is mitigate erosion of rights; and sometimes you have to settle for shining a spotlight on what is wrong.

One of our first challenges was a vote on a human rights mechanism for Sudan during the conflict in Darfur where terrible human rights abuses were commonplace. African countries opposed country-specific resolutions, which they felt unfairly targeted their continent. We urged adoption of the resolution in formal speeches, meetings with regional groups, and quiet oneon-one talks. In the end, the motion carried by one vote, cast by an African state.

I later learned that the African diplomat who stood up for principle had a niece named Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt, the chairperson of the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One lesson for me was that American advocacy for rights can reverberate across generations.

Process: An election alone does not produce democracy. Nations require many institutions and mechanisms for a healthy and resilient democracy: a free press, fair laws, independent courts, civil society, and the habits of conducting and respecting the outcome of elections. American diplomats energetically fight to promote all of these.

In Zambia in 2011, where I was our ambassador, we called on the National Democratic Institute, the international arm of the Democratic Party, to provide technical advice on upcoming elections. However, it was the buy-in of respected local institutions that made the difference in upholding respect for Zambia’s own democratic laws. We worked with local civil society— principally the three “mother churches” (Catholic, Episcopal, and Evangelical)—to support independent election monitoring. They made the difference.

We shared American experiences with the Electoral Commission of Zambia on voter education and registration, ballot preparation, efficient and accurate vote tallying, and timely and reliable announcement of results. However, it was ECZ’s courageous leader, Justice Irene Mambilima, who made the process work. When the incumbent fell behind, Justice Mambilima stood firm against calls to stop counting the ballots.

The product was a free and fair election in which Africa witnessed a peaceful, democratic transfer of power. I deeply admire former President Rupiah Banda for his staunch commitment. He emotionally conceded defeat and then attended the swearing in of his political rival. We can all learn from President Banda’s dignified example.

People: Working on behalf of refugees around the world, American diplomats are ever conscious of the potential for tragedy, including the U.S. decision in 1939 to turn away the SS St. Louis, a refugee ship from Hitler’s Germany. Nazis later exterminated many of its passengers.

The State Department leads U.S. refugee efforts and provides the bulk of U.S. assistance to help find protection and solutions for people fleeing

Mark Storella ’77

persecution around the world. During the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017, when I served in the refugee bureau at the State Department, we mustered emergency financial support to provide 700,000 Rohingya shelter, food, and water. We jawboned other donor nations to match us. We visited refugee camps to hear refugees’ stories, and we continuously urged a hard-pressed Bangladesh government to keep its border open and not expel the refugees.

We also helped manage the resettlement of a relatively small but significant number of refugees inside the United States, working with nongovernmental organizations, churches, synagogues, and mosques to find them homes, much as the State Department is doing now with Afghans who fled Taliban rule. While we have not yet begun to resettle large numbers of Rohingya refugees, by demonstrating the generosity of the American people, we built leverage to win others’ cooperation. And every person, every family protected, is a victory of us all.

One might hope we could assure human rights through great single strokes like the fall of the Soviet Union thirty years ago. That experience makes clear that the fight for human rights is a permanent one, advanced through thousands of small steps. There will be setbacks, but the effort goes on. American diplomats work around the world every day—in marbled meeting halls, villages, fledgling parliaments, prisons, and refugee camps— always focused on supporting principles, democratic process, and ultimately—and most important—people. //

Robert F. Hannan ’80

Director of Office of Consular and Management Liaison, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State, after serving as Embassy Minister Counselor in Paris, France, and Embassy Counselor Port-au-Prince, Haiti

In diplomacy today, the current fashion is to start off with a BLUF—a “bottom line up front.” It is meant to give “up front” the most important information the reader needs to know. So, my BLUF: The Foreign Service is exactly the public service for which Roxbury Latin has been “fitting” its students for these past 377 years. It is cool; it is important; and it is a very RL thing to do.

It is cool: I am a United States Foreign Service Officer. In my very first assignment, I found myself in the middle of a central African highland rainforest. I was working in Rwanda, and I was peeking over the border into the country then known as Zaire to see the eruption of Mount Nyamuragira. We were about 12 miles from the volcano, but with binoculars we could see the lava exploding out of the cone, and we could feel—more than hear—the force of the eruptions. At that moment, I thought, “This is the very thing Phil Hansen’s World Civ class was preparing me for. It is so cool!”

And it has stayed cool since. In the last 34 years, I have done 14 assignments in seven countries on four continents (including the United States). I have been to Zanzibar, Casablanca, the Andes, Singapore, the Serengeti, Siberia, and the Sahara. I have heard the call to prayer in Marrakech, seen the glaciers on Kilimanjaro, been on the floor of U.S. Congress while it was in session, done puja in Mumbai, watched the Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées, and visited Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square. Instead of learning that there is a whole world out there, I have seen it. I have learned how people in many distant lands are all the same and how they are completely and utterly different.

It is important: In my career, I have served under six presidents and 12 secretaries of state. However, my oath of office was and remains to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. My small way of doing this is to represent and serve overseas the national interests of the American people. And I have seen why this is so vitally important.

At the most basic level, all over the

world, I have gotten to visit and support Americans in hospitals, asylums, jails, and even morgues, where they were facing dire situations. In the “foreigners” section of a Russian prison camp, the whole concept of government services became very real in a stark and immediate way for me, as I was the only link for this one American prisoner to his country.

I have also been struck by how far and deep the United States’ interests around the world run. I have helped coordinate aid from the American people to fight malaria in one country and HIV in another. The United States was doing this work because it was a good thing to do, but also because it bolstered these countries to be resilient against both radical recruitment and organized crime—results very important to the United States and directly related to its own security.

It is very “RL”: John Eliot started this school a few centuries ago to “fit students for public service both in church and commonwealth.” I humbly contend that going out and representing the United States all over the world is as public service a career as anything an RL grad can do. It is precisely in the steps of the Apostle himself. He left his home to travel to a strange land, learned new languages, met foreign people, and… taught them Latin.

In the Foreign Service, it is the same thing: strange lands, new languages, foreign people. Exceptwe don’t teach Latin. Instead, we “conduct multilevel, multidisciplinary diplomatic engagement with bilateral and multilateral audiences to advance the United States’ national strategic goals.” Almost like teaching Latin.

As this Newsletter feature shows, there are several Roxbury Latin alumni actively serving in the Foreign Service. And there really should be many more. John Eliot would be proud. //

Peter Martin ’85

Special Assistant to the President at Boston College after more than 20 years of experience in the U.S. Department of State working as a team leader and policy advisor in Washington, DC, and in various foreign posts

When I entered the Foreign Service, I planned to try it for a few years to see how I liked it. It was only after 23 years, 11 moves, a wedding, and the birth of three children that I finally left the Service in 2020. Diplomatic life was constantly stimulating; living overseas and speaking foreign languages was a daily dose of adrenaline; and international affairs work was food for the brain. What made it all meaningful was that I was serving my country. A challenge of the lifestyle—and one reason I am writing this in Boston and not Budapest—is the strain of uprooting oneself and one’s family every few years.

While I spent most of my career in Europe and Canada, I worked on a wide variety of issues. In Warsaw, we helped prepare the ground for Poland’s entry into NATO and developed a U.S-Polish-Ukrainian democracy-building program, both to Russia’s displeasure. In Montreal, we worked with the Canadian government to eliminate border issues that were hampering the U.S.’s largest trade relationship. When I entered the Foreign Service, I never would have imagined that I would join UN peacekeeping forces on a pre-dawn raid to try to break up a human trafficking ring in Bosnia.

A Foreign Service career is unpredictable. By no grand design on my part, I spent seven years at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See (Vatican). I was involved with several historic events, including the visit of Presidents Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43) for the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II and the surreal 2017 meeting between Pope Francis and President Trump. However, the day-today work was the real education in the many regions and issues in which the Holy See and the United States have shared interests.

For example, we connected Catholic religious orders with the U.S. military to deliver medical aid to Liberia during the Ebola crisis. We consulted with Vatican diplomats behind the scenes as they attempted to facilitate a settlement of the political crisis in Venezuela. With international human rights a concern at the State Department, we reported to Washington on the trials of the underground Catholic Church in China. During my second tour, the Vatican played a role in brokering talks to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.

I constantly drew on my Roxbury Latin education as a diplomat. I was surprised to enjoy some facility in the Polish language, which I know I owe to six years spent declining Latin nouns with Messrs. Randall, Davey, and Jack Brennan, programming my brain for another language with case endings. In Quebec, I tried to morph my French—well-formed for five years by Madame White, Monsieur Tally, and Monsieur Conn—into some semblance of a twangy Quebecois accent. Above all, I am grateful for the writing skills, analytical abilities, and the capacity to prioritize a heavy workload under pressure that I learned at RL.

I crossed paths with my share of VIPs during my career, but I always told my children that the true measure of a diplomat—and his or her family—was how we were perceived by the people we met every day. From the Bangladeshi man selling flowers outside the embassy in Rome whom I came to know, to the Albanian interpreter I worked with in Kosovo, to the many neighbors and acquaintances from outside the embassy we knew in all our posts, we were, first and foremost, Americans. Every interaction was magnified as we stood for something greater than ourselves. This is a responsibility and a gift, and it is something we treasure from our years in the Foreign Service. //

Our alumni have a history of dedicating their lives to representing the United States around the world. In addition to those who shared their reflections, the following grads have served in the U.S. Foreign Service.

Tim Savage ’85

Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, with more than a decade of experience working on security issues in Northeast Asia, including inter-regional relations, North Korean energy issues, and nonproliferation

I had to chuckle when I read the email.

“Hello, I’m a newly arrived political officer at the Norwegian Embassy. I’m wondering if you could put me in touch with the person who covers energy, climate change, trade, internal politics, security, and Bangladesh.” Someone would have to explain to him that the “person” he was seeking was actually at least five different people in two separate sections, plus an entire section at a different embassy in another country.

One of the first things you notice when you start working at U.S. Embassies overseas is the sheer size of the U.S. presence compared to that of other countries. Embassy New Delhi, where I’m currently posted, has nearly 1,000 American employees, representing not only the Department of State but also Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and a host of sub-cabinet agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Agency for International Development. While some may see this as bureaucratic bloat, it also reflects the breadth and depth of U.S. interests. Norway is a small country that has an outsized influence on international affairs due to its wealth and activism in promoting humanitarian causes, but the extent of its interests in a faraway country like India is limited. The United States, on the other hand, is a globe-spanning

Tim Savage ’85

superpower that needs to be widely and actively involved to protect the security and prosperity of its 330 million people.

This is nowhere more obvious than in the multilateral sphere. At every multilateral meeting I have attended, the U.S. delegation dwarfed that of other countries. Having all those people allows our delegation to be present at every negotiation, making certain that our voice is heard when the rules of the game are written. While the process is often frustrating, and can sometimes devolve into mind-numbing wordsmithery, the alternative is to cede the ground to countries like Russia and China, whose interests are diametrically opposed to ours.

Case in point: I once worked in the State Department office that covers Interpol. Hollywood movies like to portray Interpol as an international police force that sends attractive agents on global manhunts to bring down international baddies. The reality, however, is more mundane. It is essentially a means for law enforcement agencies in different countries to share information on wanted criminals so they can be arrested when they attempt to cross international borders. Unfortunately, authoritarian governments often abuse the system by putting out “red notices” for the arrest of political dissidents—just ask Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom. It didn’t help that the president of Interpol was a Chinese national, Meng Hongwei. Meng’s surprising arrest by the Chinese government on corruption charges created an opportunity to find a leader from a country that respects the rule of law, but instead the Russian candidate looked like a shoo-in to be elected. Two days before Thanksgiving, with the office nearly empty, the decision came down from above to conduct an all-out push in support of the South Korean candidate, who up to that point looked like an also-ran. I spent the day helping to coordinate a global outreach campaign in which nearly every U.S. Ambassador reached out to their host government to urge them to vote for the Korean candidate, resulting in a landslide victory for the dark horse candidate. Listening to an expert on the radio a couple of days later explaining the results, which he cited as many countries coming to a sudden realization of the negative impact of a Russian victory, I had to chuckle once again, as I knew what had brought on that realization.

The American public’s weariness of “forever wars” has led to an understandable, and in many ways overdue, debate over the extent of U.S. involvement in international affairs. Too often, however, the discussion devolves into a false dichotomy between military intervention and isolation. But the current threats to the American way of life—climate change, pandemics, cyber

Vladimir Cesar ’07

insecurity, rising authoritarianism, the erosion of democratic norms—lend themselves neither to military solutions nor to purely domestic approaches. If we’re not present when the future is made, we won’t be able to make the future we want. //

Vladimir Cesar ’07

Consular Officer at Embassy Bogotá, Colombia; formerly at British Consulate-General Boston, having earned a master’s in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland

I joined the Foreign Service as a Consular Officer in April 2018, and since that time I have had the opportunity to serve in two posts in Western Hemisphere Affairs. For my first assignment, I served in U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I spent 16 months adjudicating immigrant visas in the world’s largest immigrant visa post and then an additional eight months working in the world’s largest fraud prevention unit as the deputy fraud prevention manager. I gained invaluable knowledge and insight about U.S.-Mexico relations from these experiences. My assignment coincided with the exodus of thousands of migrants who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America, the construction of a border wall, and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these events not only impacted immigration into the U.S, but they were also at the heart of the political discourse in the U.S. in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

I am currently a second-tour officer in U.S. Embassy Bogota, Colombia (another important ally for the U.S. in Latin America). I have been able to use my extensive consular knowledge to emerge as a leader at post. Since my arrival in November 2020, I have contributed to the consular unit’s efforts to reduce a significant backlog in immigrant visa cases stemming from the pandemic. As of December 2021, after a year of working in the embassy’s immigrant visa unit, I have rotated to American Citizen Services where I provide prompt, courteous, and efficient services to United States citizens and other clients, consistent with U.S. laws and regulations.

I view consular work as having the most direct impact in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and other countries. As a consular officer, I have the opportunity to protect the U.S. border by applying immigration law on a daily basis. I have direct contact with individuals from the host country every day. Through these interactions and by providing excellent customer service, I am able to impact the way people in different countries perceive the United States. Lastly, I carry out work that not only affects national security, but also the lives of countless individuals. The rewards and fulfillment that I derive from the work come from the fact that I help people every day. Through my adjudications, I have reunited families in the U.S. and helped finalize the adoption process for American families adopting children abroad. Now, as an ACS officer, I help destitute Americans return home.

Although rewarding, consular work can be emotionally taxing. I have learned to focus on my work-life balance and to enjoy the journey that I am on. At one point in my life, I was an eight-year-old immigrant from Cordoba, Argentina, on the other side of the interviewing window hoping for a better life in the United States. I now have the privilege to interview future legal permanent residents and citizens of the United States and help them pursue their dreams of living out

Nelson Tamayo ’11

the American dream. I am extremely thankful and blessed to serve my country as a diplomat. I get to give back to a country that has given me so much and at the same time experience new cultures and establish meaningful relationships with people from all over the world. //

Nelson Tamayo ’11

Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, serving as Vice Consul on Luanda, Angola, previously serving at the Consulate General of Canada in Boston and as a Fulbright Scholar in Coimbra, Portugal

It wasn’t until I found myself in line alone that my suspicion was confirmed: I was the only foreign diplomat aboard my flight to Luanda, Angola. It took the immigration officer several minutes to realize that there was someone in the “Diplomatic Passports” line, but when he did, he called me forward with a quick nod of the head. He opened instinctively to the biodata information in my black passport and flipped through the unmarked pages until he found my Angolan visa. Closing the book, and not quite reaching far enough forward to make it clear to me that he was returning it, his eyes lit up and he blurted out, “So, how does one get a visa to the U.S.?” Jetlagged from nearly 24 hours of travel, it took me a few seconds to realize that he was not, in fact, attempting to confirm my identity as a U.S. diplomat by quizzing me on the intricacies of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which I had spent the previous six weeks studying in the State Department’s “ConGen”—the congressionally-mandated course for all departing consular officers. I gave him the standard response I had been taught in training: “check travel. state.gov.” Convinced I had no more information to share, he begrudged me a stamp and slid me my passport before I proudly entered Angola as the newest Vice Consul of the United States of America.

Since arriving, I’ve had the privilege of adjudicating more than 100 non-immigrant visa applications each week. That figure is, albeit, low by Department standards—especially when compared to the high-volume visa processing posts in China, Brazil, India, or Mexico—but it nevertheless allows me to indulge my curiosity. That is, I take a few extra moments for each applicant at my window, glean one more piece of anecdotal data, and at the end of the day I try to link the chunks of information, like sections of a jigsaw puzzle, to try to see the bigger picture that is the society into which I was abruptly plunged.

The immigration officer at the airport, much like the geology student with a full-ride to LSU, the family of five whose visas I approved for a trip to Disney, the family of four whose visas I didn’t, and the docent at the National Anthropology Museum who’s been waiting four months for a paycheck yet insisted we grab a drink after I told him where I was from, all share one thing in common: the desire to travel, see, and experience America. It might sound obvious, but after two years of uncertainty and stress stemming from the COVID19 pandemic, domestic politics and a fraying international order, and an ever-worsening climate crisis, it is reassuring to know that for many in Angola and around the globe, the U.S. remains a city on a hill. This is in part due to the story that we—the U.S. government, businesses, civil society, and everyday Americans—have shared with the world.

At a time when facets of daily American life are tinged by the polarization of our politics—polarization rooted in the illiberal and authoritarian fervor of a few and fueled by rampant disinformation to the many—we must ask ourselves what story of America we wish to share with the world. The answer I find myself coming to time and again is the true story. We cannot shy away from the painful historical truths that we are a country built by the labor of enslaved people and founded on stolen land. We cannot disregard or excuse the insurrectionists who assaulted our Capitol and dared to end our Constitutional order. We must show the world that the story of America is hopeful, even at its darkest. By identifying and righting the wrongs of the past by building a just future, we come ever closer to realizing our noblest aspiration of forming a more perfect union.

With all the wisdom of an entry-level officer just two months into his first overseas assignment, I know this story—the one that is at times painful or scary but remains fundamentally inspirational, optimistic, and with an unwritten ending—is the story that allows us to project power, attract admiration, remain a beacon for others, and most importantly, remain true to ourselves. //

connected to a larger and literally life-saving purpose. As someone reminded me during the

Afghanistan crisis, “They’re not just rows on a spreadsheet.” The adrenaline rush of working on urgent or high-profile issues helps sustain you during marathon-length sprints, but really the motivation is the deeper fulfillment that comes from knowing your work is connected to something bigger than yourself, and is in service of the American people’s interests and values. I doubt I will ever do more motivating work.

Since the immediate, acute crisis phase of Afghanistan ended, I’ve shifted to my primary job, leading a team of data scientists focused on U.S. strategic competition with the

People’s Republic of China. In sloganeering and unclassified form, think Moneyball, but for US-PRC competition. Shifting from working on the urgent to the strategic has required a totally new mindset, from thinking in hours to thinking in decades. As the information environment has transformed from one of scarcity and secrecy to one of overabundance, this has required new ways of working as we think through complex foreign policy challenges: decision-makers are “drowning in information but thirsting for insight,” and part of my team’s work is to help bring structure, consistency, and assumptions-testing to deliberations that might rely excessively on intuition, heuristics, and biases.

Ryan Dukeman ’13

Ryan Dukeman ’13

Data Scientist in the U.S. Department of State, on leave from a PhD program in International Relations at Princeton University Can concepts like institutional strength and national identity ever be perfectly measured in rows and columns? Can data automate away the need for hard-nosed personal diplomacy on the ground? Of course not. But by bringing data to bear on strategic planning, resource and policy decisions, and crisis management, we’re trying to move the needle in favor of readily available, actionable insights that put leaders and diplomats in the best position to succeed on generational struggles and immediate challenges alike.

I’ve worked in or adjacent to foreign policy my entire (brief!) career, but I started my current job as a foreign affairs data scientist in the State Department’s Center for Analytics on August 30, 2021—the day before the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. In my second day on the job, I was in the State Department’s Crisis Operations Center helping track the flow of Afghans and U.S. citizens to safe havens around the world, then going home to remotely work overnight shifts managing data for consular efforts to get U.S. citizens on planes out of the country.

It would be an understatement to say this felt like being thrown into the deep end, but it speaks to why I so enjoy working in foreign affairs: All jobs have their ups and downs, but during the Afghanistan evacuation, even on the “low” days—when I spent all my time babysitting manual data-entry or just answering the phones in the Operations Center—it was unmistakably One of my favorite aspects of this work is getting to focus on these enduring strategic challenges in an innovative way. My job did not exist five years ago, and there are no established “ways we’ve always done things” to fall back on. To that end, I’d encourage RL students to consider jobs in public service and foreign affairs even if they don’t see themselves as “government people.” We desperately need top-flight techies, innovators, data analysts, and STEM experts in government to help understand and respond to new or non-traditional foreign policy problems like artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, biosecurity, and climate. If you think “the government is broken,” then come help fix it! America’s role in the world can only be as good or as powerful as the capacity of our governing institutions allows, and we need your talents to help meet tomorrow’s biggest challenges. //

Tenzin Thargay ’14

Foreign Service Officer at U.S. Department of State, having been a Fulbright Scholar in Seoul, Korea, earning a master’s in international affairs from Columbia, and graduating a Commonwealth Honors Scholar from UMass, Amherst

Growing up and sharing my Tibetan American experience with people, both foreign and domestic, naturally developed my interest in diplomacy. Each opportunity to recount my family’s immigration journey—from Tibet and India as displaced Tibetans, to the U.S. as citizens—grounds the American long-standing commitment to humanitarianism. My Tibetan Buddhist faith, gratitude to the U.S., and Roxbury Latin’s ethos of service and exposure to new cultures and languages naturally guided me to a career in government service and international affairs.

I joined the State Department as an economics track Foreign Service Officer in July 2021. I am currently in Vietnamese language training for my first diplomatic posting in Embassy Hanoi as a consular officer in June 2022. Intensive language training is a hallmark of foreign service work. Proficiency in the host country’s language, and study of the area’s culture, demonstrate respect and allow us to better engage with our counterparts. Living and working in Vietnam presents an opportunity to revisit and reflect on a site of failed U.S. foreign policy and consider the cost of war. It also presents an opportunity to reflect on how U.S.-Vietnam relations have improved remarkably and why Vietnam represents an important partner in the Asia Pacific region.

Besides linguistic and cultural skills, tennis—my favorite sport— has been my trusty diplomacy tool. Sports serve as a universal language, allowing me to transition into local communities—and make friends there—faster. My time in Seoul, South Korea, as a Fulbright Scholar underscored the importance of cultural exchange; the power of people-to-people diplomacy; and the responsibility Americans carry for representing our country and values. In representing and explaining these values and decisions of U.S. foreign policy, it is also important to challenge ideas of what American representation has traditionally looked like.

Like Roxbury Latin, the State Department is a prestigious institution with a long history. And yet both have much work to do on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The American experience of historically underrepresented groups is not a monolith, and it represents one of the U.S.’s greatest soft power assets. The State Department recognizes that our diplomatic corps lacks sufficient representation of minorities, especially in senior leadership roles. I was fortunate to receive a Department Rangel Fellowship in 2019, which provided two years of intense preparation to complete graduate studies, internships with the Department, and ultimately become a foreign service officer. The fellowship was established to recruit and retain minorities so our diplomatic presence overseas more accurately represents our diversity at home. I now serve on the Board of the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association, which is the Department’s employee affinity group for Asian American and Pacific Islanders. Advocating for my community, showing allyship, and collaborating with other Department affinity groups has shown me the importance of building coalitions and empowering underrepresented employees. However, advocating for change in institutions where culture is risk-averse naturally slows progress. Thus, culture must change to realize true and lasting advancement.

The U.S. strives to be a more perfect union every day. As RL students contemplate the past, present, and future role of the U.S. in world affairs, they should also contemplate their own role in contributing to a more just, fair, and equitable society. I think back to my Class IV Western Civilization class and reading Plato’s Apology with the late Mr. Ward. His kind smile and slow exclamation of “Remember the gadfly” is enduring advice to muster the courage and ask the difficult questions. //

Tenzin Thargay ’14