November 14, 2026
AFSA president John Dinkelman recently alerted members to the organization’s “Stance on Rumored Career Chief of Mission Nominations.” Taking a stance on a rumor seems a tad premature, but let’s play along.
As we have written before, BFF shares the belief that vacant ambassadorships are not good for the U.S. and should be filled. Now that the Trump administration is doing that, Dinkelman is worried that career candidates will not be “selected through a rigorous, nonpartisan assessment.” He is “troubled by reports that factors unrelated to qualifications, including perceived political loyalty and unfair suspicions about experienced officers, may now be shaping how career candidates are considered.”
We agree that “career diplomats… must never be asked to pass a political test to serve.” And they are not, as far as we have seen. But ambassadors also need to carry out the policies of the executive regardless of their personal beliefs. Unfortunately, they don’t always do so. Sometimes they leak (or perhaps invent) confidential conversations, or even classified information, to the press. Or they disobey instructions for their personal benefit. Given that “ninety-five percent of career federal employees who expressed political views in their work email conversations expressed liberal views,” picking senior staff is shooting fish in a barrel for liberal Democrats. But a conservative Republican administration must be more careful.
It’s also ironic that AFSA continues “to insist that the chief of mission selection process be transparent, rigorous, merit-based, and, above all, nonpartisan,” when the organization’s leaders are staunch supporters of DEI in State Department hiring, which is none of the above. DEI policies incorporate political and ideological considerations that are fundamentally at odds with a purely merit-based and non-partisan personnel system. If AFSA leaders truly champion nonpartisanship, they should start by terminating their commitment to Biden administration priorities.
