State Department’s divisive domestic diplomacy

OPINION:

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As any U.S. diplomat knows, many Americans aren’t aware of their agency’s existence, let alone its work. Say you work at the “State Department,” and people outside the Beltway often think of state capitols like Albany, Concord, or Topeka– or even the DMV.

So, although the State Department’s actual job is foreign affairs, it’s a good idea to reach out to a domestic audience to inform the public and recruit diplomats. But as those diplomats will represent every American, not just liberal coastal elites, the State’s outreach at home should be bipartisan and ideologically neutral. State is already viewed with suspicion on that score: In a 2021 survey of Americans by the Rand Corporation, “the majority considered [U.S.] diplomats to be … politically biased.”

The State Department just released its 2023 Annual Report on Engaging at Home, highlighting “the many ways our diplomats connected with Americans from all 50 states.”

But out of 1,400 events held with “civil society groups, the private sector, state and local governments, community organizations, and students,” the report shows that “senior officials” went to only 40 of the 50 states. Of the 10 states not visited, nine of them – Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming – voted Republican in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Only Vermont voted for the Democratic candidate in both elections.

The Rand researchers surveyed Americans “balanced by gender, demographic category, education, and region.” In contrast, the State Department’s report highlights engagement with a narrower cross-section of our country.

The State Department report featured two schools, Irvington High School in Fremont, Calif., and the Bronx High School for Medical Science in New York City. There was one religious-civic institution featured, Virginia Beach Friends Meeting, a Quaker community. All three institutions take explicit left-of-center public stances, for example, on gender ideology, the Israel-Hamas conflict, and illegal immigration.

The Fremont school district’s website links to the “Immigration Institute of the Bay Area,” which advises illegal aliens how to not comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to an “Immigrant Legal Resource Center,” which helps users report ICE activity in their area.

Public school teachers have a range of opinions, and they are entitled to them. However, taxpayer-funded schools should not be advocating against the enforcement of federal laws. If they do, the State Department should not distinguish them with a high-level visit.

New York City’s school district teaches that gender is a “construct,” requires schools to allow biological males into girl’s locker rooms and sports, and provides resources like this K-2 (yes, “2,” not “12”) Tool Kit for Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression. The toolkit features the lesson “Introducing Gender: Girls, Boys and More,” and links to “I Am Jazz,” a controversial book that implicitly endorses puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex change surgery for children whose parents believe they were born in the wrong body.

The State Department shouldn’t highlight cooperation with school districts that indoctrinate children with unscientific, left-wing ideology.

But what can we expect when the Secretary of State is sending guidance to diplomats overseas that “gender is a social construct and that gender identity is a person’s ‘innermost concept of self as masculine, feminine, a blend of both, or neither,’” as National Review reports. The Department tells employees that made-up gender pronouns like “ze” and “zir” “should be respected,” and to be “inclusive” by avoiding using nouns like “mother/father,” “son/daughter,” and “husband/wife” in official writing.

The third visit of senior State Department officials highlighted in its annual report was to the Virginia Beach Friends Group. The group’s “supported organizations” page includes the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), which advocates for “Sanctuary Networks” that protect illegal immigrants from the enforcement of U.S. laws. VICPP rejects deportation on principle and wants ICE out of not only schools but even jails and courts.

Such “sanctuary” policies often result in local jails refusing to comply with ICE detainers and releasing dangerous criminals onto the streets. VICPP also links to the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Response to the Israel-Gaza Conflict” which states, “The violence and death in Gaza and Israel in recent days has been acutely horrifying, even in the context of decades of conflict and oppression.”

State’s foreign programs are increasingly spreading only the leftmost side of our ideological spectrum. If the Department insists on spending public money on domestic outreach, it should do so in a way that captures diversity not only of race but of geography and political viewpoint.

The State Department’s choice to highlight visits to regions and institutions that lean to the left could be perceived by aspiring diplomats as an inherent bias that is not “inclusive” of conservative Americans.

Congress should address this by mandating via the appropriations process that domestic outreach be done with political neutrality or not at all.

• Simon Hankinson is a Senior Research Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Border Security and Immigration. From 1999-2022, he was a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department. Justin Henle is a Heritage intern.