As the Biden administration grappled with internal unrest over its November 2023 decision to continue arming Israel, a group of State Department "diversity" fellows took the unusual step of authoring their own private "dissent memo" to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, informing him of how they were "actively engaging in resistance" to the policy.
Blinken's staff, internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show, acknowledged that the disgruntled foreign service fellows did not have standing to submit a formal dissent cable but nonetheless elevated the letter through the State Department’s ranks, eliciting promises to grant the fellows a "sit down" so they could air their grievances, according to the emails.
The full-court blitz to pressure the Biden White House into publicly breaking with Israel is generating renewed scrutiny into the fellowship programs as the Trump administration works to root out so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. A senior State Department official told the Free Beacon the agency "is reviewing these and other fellowship programs to ensure they are consistent with the president's EOs and the secretary's American First foreign policy agenda."
The fellowship programs in question are the Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Program and the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Program. A group of foreign service officers hired under those programs authored the previously unreported Nov. 14 memo, obtained through a Center to Advance Security in America public records request.
Both fellowships court university students for a two-year stint in America’s diplomatic corps. The Blinken-led State Department advertised them as part of an effort to "genuinely enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the federal workforce." The programs, according to a November 2022 edition of the agency's in-house magazine, "have increased the number of Foreign Service generalists from underrepresented groups by 33% and the number of women by 6%."
The programs also sparked an internal "resistance" against the State Department's marginal support for Israel under President Joe Biden, according to the internal emails.
As Israel fought for its survival in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, fellows from both programs penned a private letter to the "leadership at the U.S. Department of State" outlining their concerns. They expressed "profound disappointment and anguish" over continued U.S. arms sales to Israel and accused the State Department of using their "diverse backgrounds as shields to deflect criticism away from the State Department."
"We are frustrated by the exploitation of our diverse backgrounds as shields to deflect criticism away from the State Department," the fellows wrote. "Rather than offering prayers for peace, we have been actively engaging in resistance against what we perceive to be an immoral course of action."
The fellows detailed their participation "in protests advocating for a ceasefire" and said they had already "contacted our members of Congress" to push them into supporting similar policies. "Despite all this," they added, "we cannot escape the feeling of complicity in what we consider to be a grave humanitarian crisis."
Elsewhere in the letter, the budding diplomats said their "collective cognitive dissonance has been overwhelming during these past weeks," emphasizing that their "silence reflects complicity in the actions of the State Department."
"Let this letter serve as a collective expression of the despair and aspirations towards peace that we express in solidarity with innocent civilians who have lost their lives in the conflict," they wrote.
Over the next week, top members of Blinken's staff forwarded the memo to senior officials. Recipients included Blinken's chief of staff, Suzy George; his undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland; and his department counselor, Derek Chollet.
Those staffers noted that the fellows "are not eligible to submit formal dissents." Instead of reprimanding them, however, Blinken's team said they would "reach out and offer to sit down with them." They also let the fellows know "that we have brought their letter to the attention of Department leadership," internal emails show.
On Nov. 21, one week after the fellows sent the "resistance" memo, George noted that Nuland's team was working "to set up a policy discussion" with the fellows for the following week. "We will share a copy of the letter with S as well," George wrote in an apparent reference to Blinken. In another email from that same day, George asked officials to "print and share" the letter with Blinken directly.
The letter came amid parallel efforts by veteran career diplomats to steer the Biden administration into a more overtly anti-Israel policy, including a wholesale freeze on arms shipments.
While Blinken and other senior leaders initially rebuffed these efforts, their willingness to privately negotiate with Israel critics paved the way for the eventual adoption of more hardline policies towards Israel. And just a month after the fellows sent their dissent memo, Blinken held a private meeting with State Department staffers opposed to America’s support for Israel.
The Pickering and Rangel fellows have historically been selected based on DEI criteria, according to their websites, which include images of past fellows celebrating Pride Month and posing with rainbow flags.
James Fitzpatrick, the director of the Center to Advance Security in America group that unearthed the dissent memo and subsequent emails, said both fellowship programs "should be immediately eliminated pursuant to the president and secretary Rubio’s orders," which call for the dismantling of DEI initiatives inside the State Department.
"It’s no surprise that the participants of these programs penned a letter to the Biden State Department dissenting from the administration’s policies of providing some weapons to Israel," Fitzpatrick said. "These documents show that the bureaucrats who were selected under DEI policies were attempting to organize on federal time and undermine official American foreign policy related to our greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel."