Pardee Works: Careers in Trump’s State Department
The Pardee Works series at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University continued on April 6, 2018 with a conversation about careers in the State Department under United States President Donald Trump.
The discussion featured David Buckley, Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville and former Senior Advisor in the Department of State’s Office of Religion in Global Affairs, and Amb. Robert Loftis, Pardee School Professor of the Practice of International Relations and Former U.S. Ambassador to Lesotho. The conversation was moderated by Jeremy Menchik, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School.
Loftis, who served in the State Department under multiple presidential administrations, said that he never experienced a significant shift in American policy from one administration to the next.
“While the emphasis changed from one administration to the next, you didn’t find these really lurching changes in American policy because I think there was a sense that American interests didn’t change that dramatically,” Loftis said. “Donald Trump does throw that into question quite a bit, and you can take two views of it — if this represents a long-term trend for the way that the United States approaches diplomacy then I think I would question whether to pursue a career in diplomacy. I think it’s more likely that this is an aberration.”
Buckley explained how the Trump administration and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson constrained some of the avenues into careers at the State Department.
“There are different ways you can come into the State Department, and Secretary Tillerson cut off basically all of them — even beyond what the Trump administration forced him to do,” Buckley said. “There was a universal hiring freeze across the federal government for a while, and Secretary Tillerson kept that in place longer than he had to. Civil service hiring was also really constrained. It’s just something to be aware of, some of those paths aren’t as easy to get onto right now as they have been in the past.”
Loftis said despite the current challenges of embarking on a career in the State Department, he would encourage anyone who is seriously interested to apply.
“If I were giving advice to someone looking to start a career as a junior person in the State Department right now I would say go for it,” Loftis said. “The amount of work and challenges ahead of you are huge. Quite frankly, if you don’t embrace those kind of challenges and you don’t embrace that kind of workload you have no business being there anyway.”
Buckley discussed how his time working as Senior Advisor in the Department of State’s Office of Religion in Global Affairs has proven useful to his academic work.
“One thing that is important for me to stress is how little scholars — and even scholars of international affairs — understand about how bureaucracy works and about life in government unless they actually do it. I benefited immensely from working in government,” Buckley said. “If any you think of yourselves as more of an academic or think tank person, there’s no substitute for working in government. You learn a tremendous amount about bureaucratic processes and about how America’s interests are implemented across different agencies. For those reasons I think it’s important to continue to think about government service because you see political processes differently from the inside, and you will be a better scholar because of that experience.”
Loftis emphasized that the current challenges facing anyone looking to embark on a career with the State Department are not permanent, and that he fully expects the current climate to change.
“If you are thinking about a career at the State Department as a civil servant or a foreign service officer the sense right now is that this is not the time to do it. Let me ask you to rethink that for a couple of reasons,” Loftis said. “I don’t think that Donald Trump represents the norm for us, I think that there will be changes again. There’s likely to be a marked correction after this. Even if he is reelected he’s only going to be in for a total of six more years and your careers are going to last a lot longer than that.”
The Pardee Works series focuses on bringing professionals currently working in the diverse field of global studies to present for and network with Pardee School students. In addition to the annual Pardee Works career symposium, recent Pardee Works talks have covered topics including career opportunities at the CIA and DIA and careers in the Foreign Service. The next Pardee Works talk will focus on how to manage the job application process and how to have a powerful networking conversation.