Office of the Historian

241. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State for Management (Read) and the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Spokesman (Carter)1

Washington, March 18, 1980

TO

  • AF—Mr. Richard M. Moose
  • ARA—Ambassador William G. Bowdler
  • PM—Mr. Reginald Bartholomew
  • EA—Mr. Richard Holbrooke
  • EUR—Mr. George S. Vest
  • NEA—Mr. Harold H. Saunders

SUBJECT

  • Habib Committee Report and the Scholar-Diplomat Program

As you know, the Habib Committee Report on recruitment and examination for the career Foreign Service received the Secretary’s endorsement and commendation,2 and was made available for general distribution on February 26. We encourage you to become familiar with it if you have not already done so. The overall thrust and basic conclusions of the Report will be of interest to all members of your staffs.

In the section dealing with an expanded recruitment effort by the Department, one of the recommendations (no. 9) is that the Scholar-Diplomat Program “should give preference to scholars from colleges and universities with heavy concentrations of minorities and women, and to minority and women scholars”.

Since the final responsibility for selecting both the educational institutions and the participating scholars rests with the bureaus, you and your staff will have primary responsibility for implementing this recommendation. Both PA/PP and M/EEO will be able to assist you in re-orienting your bureau Scholar-Diplomat Program in the direction desired by the Habib Committee. John Burroughs’ office will be mailing out the Program brochure to the presidents/chancellors of the 105 historically black colleges and of other colleges and universities with a large Hispanic enrollment. The brochure will also go to a large number of higher educational institutions with a predominantly female student body. We will ask the recipients to let the Department know if their institutions would be interested in participating in the Program. Those [Page 960] responding positively will be asked to supply names of faculty members recommended for participation, including particularly women and minority persons.

As these lists are completed, they will be made available to you as a resource base in implementing recommendation no. 9 of the Habib Committee Report. PA/PP (Ilmar Heinaru) and M/EEO (John Burroughs, Charles Tanguy or Barbara Thomson) will, of course, be happy to offer you any further assistance or guidance. In any event, they will look forward to hearing from you on the results you obtain. As indicated in the second part of the recommendation, the Office of Recruitment will develop a follow-up with future “alumni” of the program as a means of broadening the Department’s recruitment efforts toward minority and women students.

  1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Records of the Under Secretary for Management (M), 1980, Box 3, Chron March 15–22, 1980. No classification marking.↩
  2. See footnote 2, Document 231 and Document 238.↩