What’s Right with the Ben Franklin Fellowship
Simon Hankinson
May–June 2026
The Ben Franklin Fellowship (BFF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of current and former foreign affairs professionals. We aim to add depth to the debate about how the United States should interact with other nations as we begin our next 250 years. We have little interest in Washington-bubble spats. We seek to engage those who disagree with us in the hope of finding common ground and policies in the national interest.
The press coverage we have received ranges from merely critical to outright conspiratorial. Individuals supportive of the old Washington consensus have attacked us in the media, attributing to us a phantom influence reminiscent of conspiracy theories involving the Masons or the Elders of Zion.
So, who are we really? In 2024, three retired FSOs started the BFF with a common point of view, summed up in our eight basic principles. We wanted as wide a tent of opinion as possible consistent with loving our country and wishing it prosperity and strength. I encourage readers to decide for themselves what the principles represent. I’d summarize them as conservative and resistant to recent “woke” ideologies.
Our membership grew quickly, from among those who found the “progressive” turn of U.S. foreign policy and the bureaucracy that enacts it to be increasingly unrepresentative of Americans and America’s core interests. The Washington establishment has long been left of center, but under the umbrella of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), the State Department began by the 2000s actively to discriminate in favor of supposedly “marginalized” identity groups.
Meanwhile, State and USAID exported contentious social theories as if they were core American beliefs crucial to the building of prosperous democracies, rather than fringe ideas likely to disappear in time.
The recent attacks on BFF go beyond ideological disagreement and seem highly personal. In separate Speaking Out articles in AFSA’s Foreign Service Journal, Ambassador Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, wrote that “Our Professional Foreign Service Is in Danger,” while Ambassador Eric Rubin, a former president of AFSA, asked, “What’s Wrong with the Ben Franklin Fellowship?”
On social media, Rubin posted the BFF logo with the caption “Know thy enemy.” Does Rubin genuinely believe that our roster of fellows, with collective centuries of public service, are enemies of this country? Does he seriously think that our members, many of whom are military veterans, are acting out of hostility to the United States?
The Myth of Nonpartisanship
The theme of those articles is that the BFF has taken a nonpartisan State Department and suddenly politicized it. That is willful ignorance of Washington’s interlocking academic and foreign-policy sphere, which uniformly cherishes “progressive” globalism.
Critics of BFF note that some of our members are in political positions at State, and they theorize that membership is required for success. They ignore that some BFF members were separated from the Service last year, nor accept that the great majority of political appointments at State are the fruit of relationships that predate or supersede our organization. The paucity of conservatives inside State would suggest that most jobs are still filled by career officers who voted for Harris–Walz.
Equity vs. Equality of Opportunity
One core belief of BFF is that hiring, promotion, and assignments should be based on merit. We lament any discrimination in America’s past as much as we reject it as “restorative justice” in the future.
Unfortunately, the State Department went all-in on “equity”—which I define as equal outcomes regardless of variables in inputs—and attempted to balance past injustice by steering hiring, promotion, and assignments toward favored groups.
The Biden administration added a DEIA precept to the Foreign Service rating metrics, which clearly favored groups with “intersectional” cards to play. Under Trump, the department is trying to return to objective metrics by replacing the DEIA precept with a “Fidelity” precept.
For much of the past century, State Department hiring was meritocratic. The Civil Service had a competitive exam. For the Foreign Service, those who passed the written test went on to take the oral test. Those who passed the oral test usually became Foreign Service officers. But this didn’t produce equal outcomes, so the Civil Service exam was scrapped.
For the Foreign Service, the Board of Examiners inserted in 2007 a “Qualification Evaluation Panel” (QEP) as a filter between written and oral tests, which I believe was designed to accomplish the same “race-rigging” as higher education achieved through “holistic review.”
The QEP essentially injected prototype DEI into the hiring process, allowing BEX to bypass lower scores in racially desired applicants through assessments of character, life experience, or other subjective measures. The result was as predictable as it was calculated: Fewer white males were hired. AFSA questioned the practice at first but now criticizes the Trump administration for attempting to undo the damage it caused to innocent individuals.
What Rubin Gets Wrong
Rubin claims that “State has hosted several joint activities with BFF, including recruitment events.” Yes, a few State officials have spoken at events sponsored by BFF, just as they do for countless other groups. That’s called public diplomacy.
Rubin says BFF is “the only employee organization permitted to function at all.” He laments that a host of identitarian employee groups are deprived of “official recognition” and the use of State Department spaces. I believe these private groups are welcome to do their thing, but like the BFF, none deserve support from taxpayers nor free use of government facilities.
Rubin charges that “senior active-duty officers who are members of BFF” have published articles “supporting immigration enforcement” and “denouncing DEIA,” policies that he scathingly calls “President Trump’s domestic political agenda.” Really? Is it merely Trump’s agenda, not bipartisan duty, to support the enforcement of laws passed by Congress, including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Rubin claims that “BFF’s focus on ‘meritocracy’ is really about returning white men to exclusive leadership roles,” insinuating racism and sexism. In fact, BFF is diverse in membership and open to all who accept our principles. But it is hardly surprising that fewer of the identity groups who reaped the benefits of DEI would seek to join BFF in championing equal opportunity.
Rubin doesn’t criticize the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group founded by former Biden political appointees. Their agenda is “progressive” and globalist. All eight of their founding members are women—hardly diverse or inclusive.
Finally, Rubin claims “members of the BFF are rife with hostility toward the Foreign Service and its members.” I don’t know where he gets this. Our members are united in love of country and respect for the Foreign Service, of which we are often lonely defenders among conservatives.
Common Ground?
Despite Rubin’s hostility toward our organization, there is common ground. First, we agree that U.S. ambassador positions should not be vacant. They should be filled with capable people who will follow directives from the Secretary of State. Trump should get on with nominating them, and the Senate should confirm them.
Second, Rubin has a “vision of our Foreign Service being representative of our country in every respect.” So do we. Except Rubin doesn’t seem to want diversity of viewpoint. Accept the progressive dogma or perish, he implies, warning that “when the administration changes, [BFF members] are going to find themselves in a very awkward and disadvantaged position.”
Rubin may be right, since the environment at State remains one of left-wing consensus that punishes all other views.
Liberals greatly outnumber conservatives in the Foreign Service. As national demographics change, the only things holding this country together are shared values and fair competition. That is why the BFF is so adamant that reforms are needed to the Foreign Service’s recruitment, retention, and promotions processes.
BFF members have argued that the majority of FSOs will do their jobs capably whatever their personal beliefs. We hope that AFSA shares our BFF principle that “the professional U.S. diplomatic and consular corps should, based on merit, recruit, select, assign, and promote Americans of all backgrounds from across the country, without discrimination or preference on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or other immutable characteristics.”
We welcome Ambassador Neumann’s assertion that “there is an urgent need for dialogue” as to how to improve our nation’s diplomatic service. AFSA President John Dinkelman recently wrote that “we need to come together in person, face to face, to find … common ground.”
In this spirit, perhaps AFSA and its allies would consider meeting and exchanging ideas with BFF leadership instead of devoting pages of The Foreign Service Journal to attacking them. We hope so. We’ll be waiting.
Simon Hankinson served as an FSO from 1999 to 2022 in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Washington, D.C. He is now a senior research fellow at the Center for Border Security and Immigration at The Heritage Foundation. Hankinson is a co-founder of the Ben Franklin Fellowship and author of The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey) (Academica Press, 2025).
