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The Scholar-Diplomat Seminar on Latin American Affairs: The Promise and Illusions of the State Department Reform Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

William N. Dunn
William N. Dunn*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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We like to believe that ideals and conscious motivation govern history. In an area so controversial as United States-Latin American relations, a preoccupation with ideological determinants of policy and action has been part of a standard approach to problems and issues of Latin American economic, social, and political development, especially in the past decade. The influence of beliefs in the efficacy of the motive in history is illustrated by periodic harassment and quasi-purges of the Department of State, which is perceived by congressional critics as an organizational haven for the disloyal, weak, or misguided, and by diatribes from the left against official Washington which are typically based on some variation of the view that the state department harbors men with evil ideas.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Summer 1971 , pp. 77 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. The “foreign affairs community” comprises the Department of State and related government agencies concerned with foreign affairs (USIA, CIA, ACDA, DOD), academic institutions, and businesses with foreign interests. For a recent analysis of the “foreign affairs community” and state department reform see Andrew M. Scott, “Environmental Change and Organization Adaptation: the Problem of the State Department,” International Studies Quarterly, 14:1 (1970), 85-95. The American Foreign Service Association, it should be noted, distinguishes two principal communities concerned with foreign affairs: the “foreign affairs community,” comprising key government agencies (State, AID, USIA), and the “academic, business, and media communities.” See American Foreign Service Association, Toward a Modern Diplomacy: A Report to the American Foreign Service Association (Washington: American Foreign Service Association, 1968), 115-16.

2. Scholar-Diplomat Seminars held in 1970-71 include the following areas and subjects: Latin American Affairs; African Affairs; Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs; and International Organizations, Politico-Military Affairs and Comparative Politics. Each Seminar was held at the Department of State over a period of one week.

3. For example, Chris Argyris, “Some Causes of Organizational Ineffectiveness within the Department of State” (1967); The American Foreign Service Association, Towards A Modern Diplomacy (1968); E. Raymond Platig, “Foreign Affairs Analysis: Some Thoughts on Expanding Competence,” International Studies Quarterly, 13:1 (1969), 1-18; John E. Harr, “The Issue of Competence in the Department of State,” International Studies Quarterly, 13:1 (1970), 95-102; and Raymond Tanter, “Foreign Affairs Analysis: An Activist vs. a Hippie,” International Studies Quarterly, 13:1, (1970), 102-111.

4. See Tanter, 1970.

5. Scott, 1969, 1970; Harr, 1970.