Insider Quote: “If there were more of us willing to speak up about issues that matter …”

September 3, 2015 By in Awards, Consular Work, Consulate General, Courage, Diplomatic Life, Dissent, Foreign Service, FSOs, Org Culture, Quotes, Realities of the FS, State Department Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Posted: 12:02 am EDT
[twitter-follow screen_name=’Diplopundit’ ]

 

Amelia Shaw joined the Foreign Service (public diplomacy cone) in 2014 after careers in journalism and public health. She is currently doing consular work in Tijuana, her first post. She is the 2015 recipient of the W. Averell Harriman Award for Constructive Dissent. Below is an excerpt from Deconstructing Dissent, FSJ | September 2015:

“I am proud that I found a constructive way to take a stand on an issue that matters to me. But I can’t help wondering what the department would look like if there were more of us willing to speak up about issues that matter, large and small, regardless of whether or not we think we can actually change anything. Or as one senior officer pointed out to me, we dissent every day—but the difference is whom we dissent to and how far we are willing to go with it. At heart, it’s a question of integrity. Sometimes just adding your voice is enough.”

— Amelia Shaw
Foreign Service Officer

 #

 

One response

  1. Has the Service and the Department changed that much? I distinctly remember endless professional discussions and differences of opinion at posts and in the Department about large and small matters among colleagues: peers, seniors, and juniors. That habit was, in fact, one of the joys of the Foreign Service. Has professonal discussion including difference of opinion so disappeared in the 20 years since I retired?