The State Department has launched a throwback recruitment campaign following layoffs and changes to diversity policies.
Foreign Policy
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The video even comes with a pump-up song: a sample of 1971’s “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”—an odd choice given that the song is about working for the FBI.
Not everyone is buying it. For one, despite the song, there are few women in the ad. Nor do its black-and-white vintage images show many people of color—a fact that one former top diplomat called out as a return to the stereotype of the State Department as “pale, male, Yale.”
Whether or not that resonates with applicants is another matter.
In conversations with State Department applicants and university representatives, many said there is continued eagerness to join the foreign service. But agency layoffs and Trump administration policies are weighing on some applicants’ minds, potentially limiting the pool of those willing to join the ranks of U.S. diplomats—while perhaps appealing to others.
The State Department’s campaign launched April 1 with the video featuring retro images of American diplomats. It then was followed by a Substack post by Secretary of State Marco Rubio touting the work of celebrated diplomats and American revolutionaries Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin. The State Department later released another ad focused on U.S. diplomatic history, as well as ads featuring images from the April 1 video.
The material for both campaigns draws heavily from U.S. history. Some of the images for the April 1 video are taken from a 1938 newsreel about foreign service recruitment. The audio is also from the 1938 newsreel, which features diplomat Gardiner Howland Shaw telling a group of young men that diplomats are “sample Americans.” The footage has more typically been used to highlight historical elitism in the State Department, and featured most recently in a PBS documentary on the Black diplomats who helped break down racial barriers there.
The campaign comes as the State Department enacts recruitment and training policies to align itself with the Trump administration’s agenda—including getting rid of what Rubio called “DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] excesses.” The standard test that applicants take no longer includes questions related to a candidate’s diversity—such as how often they have “interacted with people from different cultures or backgrounds”—a feature that conservative publications have argued was akin to a “political loyalty test.”
The A-100 course, the introductory training taken by all foreign service officers, will now also include lessons on “America First” foreign policy. The course also now features teachings from Angelo Codevilla, a prominent conservative scholar whose work prefigured Trump’s populist appeal.
Separately, the State Department is working to “expand the State Department’s recruitment pipeline,” according to a post on X by Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas. An accompanying photo of Rigas meeting with former foreign service officers and university representatives appears to picture Jason Bohm, dean of the evangelical Liberty University’s government program, among other attendees.
Details of the new campaign, such as how many new diplomats the State Department needs, are unclear. In response to questions from Foreign Policy, a State Department official, who was not authorized to make a public comment, stated that “the department aims to attract talent based on merit, and our efforts are aligned with that goal.”
The administration’s budget request, however, suggests that it is not planning on rapidly expanding the service, and is perhaps only focused on replacing those who leave through attrition. The State Department is pushing to finalize the layoffs of around 250 foreign service officers announced last summer as part of Rubio’s high-profile mass reorganization of the department. The department separately paused internships last summer and has “postponed” 2026 applications for the Pickering fellowship, a merit-based program traditionally geared toward minority applicants. The State Department also canceled the “diplomat in residence” program, which placed diplomats in universities across the country.
A woman in a blue blazer and red shirt stands outside the Harry S. Truman Building, wiping tears from her eyes. She is carrying several bags, including a colorful reusable tote.
A laid-off employee fights back tears while carrying a box of office belongings as she leaves the U.S. State Department in Washington on July 11, 2025. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The State Department has suggested that the Trump administration’s changes to the agency—such as its smaller workforce and decreased focus on diversity—isn’t deterring people from wanting to join the foreign service. In October of last year, the State Department said that it had received more applicants than “at any point in the last decade.”
But the State Department’s foreign service union disputed that characterization, saying that the numbers for past years actually showed a decrease in applications compared to 2021.
“The process to bring in America’s diplomats has always been something that has been tweaked and altered to fit whatever the need of that generation was,” said John Dinkelman, president of the American Foreign Service Association. “While changes by any given administration are nothing new [to the recruitment and testing process], the extent and nature to which things are being altered has been alarming.”
Dinkelman, a retired longtime diplomat whose last posting was as a diplomat in residence at Howard University, a historically Black university, praised his old program, which before Rubio eliminated it focused on casting a wide net in its recruitment of new foreign service officers from outside the traditional Washington-area and East Coast Ivy League schools.
Diplomats assigned to the program typically did not teach courses at their host colleges but rather spent much of their time traveling around their assigned regions, visiting military bases, technical colleges, law enforcement academies, and medical schools to pitch the foreign service to Americans who might not otherwise have considered it a viable or attractive career option.
“Diplomats in residence were most likely targeted for elimination because many of them were based at minority-serving institutions. But this ignores the fact that we were traveling and doing DEI for everything, including looking for those Americans outside of those liberal bastions to make sure that we were fully representing all views in America,” said another former diplomat in residence, who asked not to be named for fear of professional retaliation. “I personally spent time recruiting on military bases and in conservative areas. My colleagues and I made a point to reach out to all.”
A woman with braided hair and glasses stands at a podium, wearing a red blazer. She is positioned in front of a large portrait and two American flags.
Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley smiles after then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that she would be the State Department’s first chief diversity officer during a news conference in Washington on April 12, 2021. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The foreign service has never been demographically representative of the United States, despite modest efforts by the Biden administration to increase the recruitment and retention of minority diplomats. A 2020 study by Congress’s internal watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, found that from fiscal 2002 through fiscal 2018, the proportion of racial or ethnic minorities in the foreign service increased from 17 percent to 24 percent, still significantly trailing the rapidly diversifying picture of the United States. And Black diplomats made up only 7 percent of the foreign service, despite Black Americans constituting 13.4 percent of the U.S. population at that time.
“The department is still male, pale, and Yale. It has moved very little from that,” said a Democratic congressional aide, who was not authorized to be quoted. “The idea that a lot of progress was made in that space was not true.”
The State Department has not been forthcoming to repeated requests from Democratic lawmakers with oversight responsibilities for information about what is driving the decision to move away from the previous process for recruiting and testing foreign service applicants and why the Trump administration believes the changes will result in a more merit-focused diplomatic corps, said the staffer.
“This is basically all ideologically driven rather than data-driven. They haven’t done the homework,” said the staffer. “They believe these certain things without having any data to back it up. Merit was always there. This was always an entirely merit-based process.”
People walk across a crosswalk in front of a large, multi-story government building. One man pushes a shopping cart loaded with large cardboard boxes, while a woman beside him carries a reusable shopping bag.
Fired U.S. State Department workers push their belongings in a shopping cart as they leave the building in Washington on July 11, 2025.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
So far, there are few signs of a mass loss of interest in a career in the State Department.
Students at Georgetown University, a historical feeder school for the State Department, remain interested in a career there, according to Joel Hellman, the dean of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. A career services advisor at another school in Washington, D.C., who was not authorized to speak publicly, agreed that student interest had not significantly decreased.
Two applicants, who requested anonymity so as not to jeopardize their application, likewise said they remained interested in the State Department despite layoffs and other changes within the agency, including the end of diversity-promotion programs.
“It’s something that I really wanted to do for a very long time,” said the first of the two applicants. “Since middle school, it’s been my dream to become a diplomat.”
“I believe the U.S. has something to offer,” said the second applicant. “Trying to seek a State Department career is putting my money where my mouth is.”
But the layoffs are still having an impact on potential applicants. “My students are extremely wary of [the State Department],” said one university professor in the Washington, D.C., area, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. Some students were frustrated by the cancellation of internships, the professor said, while others had attempted to make use of alumni networks only to find that those alumni had been laid off from the State Department.
“I sense particularly deep frustration and disappointment with those who chose to spend a lot of money to study so close to the Capitol, as marketing materials advertised, and then see the career paths they had been told would open for them close,” the professor said.
The layoffs likewise were a focus for both of the applicants that Foreign Policy spoke with, but they did not dissuade them. “It might just take longer to become a [foreign service officer] or get into the profession,” the second applicant said.
A man in a navy polo shirt and khaki pants stands in front of a building, holding up a black sign with white text that reads, "Diplomacy Matters. Feds Matter." A group of people stands in the background watching.
A man holds a sign outside the U.S. State Department in Washington on July 11, 2025.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
The turmoil may even be encouraging to some applicants. Some student mentors at Georgetown have noted that “the opportunities within the State Department will actually increase, because there’s been such a significant sort of shift of mid- and senior-level personnel out of the State Department,” Hellman said.
The State Department’s new policies on diversity, as well as the Trump administration’s general foreign policy, likewise may influence some—but not necessarily keep them from applying.
The second applicant, who came from a minority religious and ethnic background, said the turn away from diversity policies was not a significant influence on him. In a reflection of the complexity of motivations, meanwhile, he said that his experience as a minority drew him to the noninterventionist element of the current administration.
The first applicant, likewise from a minority group, described at least some loss of motivation related to Trump administration policies, pointing to reporting on the alleged targeting of Black and female officers in the military. Again, though, they didn’t describe themselves as deterred from applying.
One unknown is how many applicants may be drawn in explicitly because of the State Department’s new policies. The Ben Franklin Fellowship, an association of current and former foreign service officers, many of whose members lean conservative, has held events for students at Notre Dame, Missouri State University, and Liberty University since the start of the Trump administration.
“These are places where you have a different kind of student who is just as smart as anybody who goes to Georgetown, but they may not have thought about the foreign service,” said Matt Boyse, a co-founder of the Ben Franklin Fellowship. Such schools lean more conservative than East Coast schools and can contribute to political diversity at the State Department, Boyse added.
While it’s unclear how many students eventually apply for the State Department, Boyse said that interest has been high. “There’s a sense of patriotism and service to the country.”
