Women have come a long way in fighting for equality within the workforce. This has inevitably shaped relationships for women…
The Struggle for Equal Rights: LGBTQ Advocacy in the Foreign Service
While working at the U.S. embassy in Seychelles in 1985, David Buss fell in love with a Peace Corps volunteer,…
Fighting LGBT Discrimination, and Fighting to Stay in the Foreign Service
Up until the late 1990s, Foreign Service careers were denied to openly gay men under the pretense of security concerns.…
Migrating with Iran’s Bakhtiari Tribe Before the Revolution: A Tale From the Foreign Service
Back when the United States had diplomatic missions in Iran, a young Foreign Service Officer travelled with members of the…
From the 1985 Achille Lauro Hijacking to the 2014 Ebola Crisis: Steven Browning’s Foreign Service Career
Steven Browning was a third-tour Foreign Service Officer in Alexandria, Egypt when he found himself in the midst of the…
Foreign Service Newly-Weds in 1960s Yemen
Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Yemen was been a hot spot for unrest in the Middle East. The…
When One of “The Murrow Boys” Became a Foreign Service Wife
Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson was the only female member of the original generation of CBS Radio war correspondents known as…
Rooted in the Good Earth: White, Protestant “China Brats” in the Foreign Service
A confluence of two rising movements in the early 1800s, Western outreach to China and reinvigorated Christian evangelism, led to…
Teaching the Foreign Service to Speak Foreign Languages
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institution to prepare American diplomats to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests,…
The Incidental Oriental Secretary and Other Tales of Foreign Service
Back to Diplomats and Diplomacy Dick Jackson captures the humor and sheer incongruity of working across cultures in an international…