State Department Headquarters
Update: As of June 30, multiple social media sources related to the Rangel and Pickering fellows reported that fellows have received an exemption from the hiring freeze and will enter as Foreign Service Officers.
This week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson faced a series of high profile questions from lawmakers about proposed cuts to the State Department budget and a hiring freeze. Congressmen from across the political spectrum expressed skepticism about budget cuts they say are a “penny-wise and a pound foolish”, diminishing the United States’ ability to prevent crises before it has to use military force to clean one up. Trump’s State Department faces new questions both about Trump’s willingness to keep U.S. commitments and continue to promote both thought and background diversity. Two specific diversity programs, the Rangel and Pickering Fellowships, have drawn special attention during the questioning. These programs provide funding for student from economically and racially diverse backgrounds to obtain a Masters degree. Upon graduating, interning at State for two summers, and passing the State Department’s rigorous selection and hiring process, they spend at least five years as career Foreign Service Officers.
The controversy started with a June 13 exchange between Tillerson and Senator Christopher Coons (D-DE) in which Coons questioned him about tough decisions that students graduating through the Rangel and Pickering Fellowship programs are facing due to the hiring freeze, which canceled their introductory course, A-100. Tillerson said that he would look into the status of the Fellows but that the Department had not frozen any of these programs.
Exchange with Senator Coons (Below):
Tillerson faced questions the next day from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) also grilled Tillerson and suggested granting an exemption for Rangel and Pickering Fellows. Tillerson responded that Fellows never had a “guarantee” of Foreign Service employment, that offers were made based on work completed by the fellows, but that they “always have an offer to go to work in Consular Affairs.”
Exchange with Rep. Gregory Meeks
Apparently not satisfied, Rep. Meeks joined with Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) to send a letter released Thursday morning to Tillerson urging him to “accommodate” the programs despite the freeze. They noted that Congress “explicitly” authorized 10 positions for each program (20 hires overall) in a 2017 budget, with bipartisan support, and that “a temporary consular position” such as Tillerson proposed “does not meet Congressional intent.”
Pressed on this situation at the end of Thursday’s press briefing by veteran Associated Press diplomatic reporter Matthew Lee (after dodging the question two days earlier) , State Department spokesman Heather Nauert clarified that these program fellows would be able to enter the Consular Fellows Program, designed for 5 years of consular work, until A-100 classes open. They would perform many of the same duties as first-tour general officers such as processing visas and providing services to U.S. citizens abroad. Lee pushed back accusing the Department of “breaking” their contract with the Fellows, who presumably, will have already passed the full Foreign Service Test and Oral Assessment, interned for two summers, and prepared to do a range of work in the Department over five years. Nauert pointed out that Fellows would also receive the benefits and pay of an entry-level Foreign Service Officer (which varies by education. Officers entering with a Masters would receive a FP5-Step 5 scale pay, or $59,387). Although Consular Fellows are temporary, non-tenure track positions, Nauert pushed back (like many foreign service officers I talked to when I interned for State in Summer 2016) against a view of Consular work as “thankless” while also framing this offer as an attempt to make the best of a “no[n]- ideal” situation.
Nauert’s exchange with Matthew Lewis (41:50)
Risks remain. According to Lee,while the option existed for Consular Fellows to wait for the next Foreign Service Officer class to open up, Nauert did not indicate any projections for when the Department would start taking in employees. Nor did she clarify what would happen if participants were, for example, to spend at least four years in Consular positions (if the hiring freeze continued through Trump’s first term) with only one guaranteed year for general work. While Nauert is correct that State needs and values Consular officials (the Fellows program was created with that in mind), most officers only perform one of their first two tours of duty as a Consular officer before rotating to their area of specialty. Furthermore, Rangel and Pickering students prepared for career appointments which enjoy civil service protections. The Consular Fellow positions are, as Nauert and Lee noted, “non-career” and may be “ terminated at any time depending on satisfactory performance and the needs of the Service.”
One can be forgiven for thinking, as Lee does, that this offer is a bait and switch, one more way to erode protections for government employees. After all, the State Department created the programs under the Congressional mandate (104 Stat. 42 Sec. 47) to recruit “minority students” as candidates under Section 105 of the 1980 Foreign Service Act, a section for “career members”, not temporary employees. What’s more, the government has already vested money and time in these highly trained students. Having them stamping for up to five years instead of two hardly promotes the “efficiency of the Service” demanded by the State Department’s own regulations, the same “efficiency” invoked by Tillerson to justify his proposed scale-back to begin with.
President Trump and Secretary Tillerson should just exempt the fellows. Put having an effective foreign policy branch above whatever ideological concerns are pushing them to unnecessarily anger Democrats and Republicans alike (all for 20 positions out of over 13,000). By trying to push these temporary positions on educated minority hires, Trump’s administration may win a political battle and lose an all-important war to show it is capable of living up to its promises to the high-skilled minorities President Trump claims he wants working for him anyway.
Correction: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of the name of Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY).
Update: See the June 18 Washington Post Story about the Rangel and Pickering Fellowship dilemma here.