Biden looks to rehire diplomats, others fired by Trump to rebuild State Department

WASHINGTON — Five days after President Donald Trump took office, Linda ThomasGreenfield, assistant secretary of State for African Affairs, was summarily fired — the start of what was to become a purge of senior State Department officials and career professionals over nearly four years.

Now Thomas-greenfield is back, leading President-elect

Joe Biden’s State Department transition team to restore its devastated morale.

That is expected to include an ambitious campaign to rebuild the department’s ranks by recalling veteran officials like herself driven away and refilling many of the approximately 1,500 foreign service and civil servant jobs lost under Trump, as well as vacant ambassadorial positions.

Biden’s ability to fulfill his promise to restore “normalcy” in the U.S. will rely heavily on whether he can revitalize key agencies, starting with State and including the Environment Protection Agency, Education Department and Labor Department.

“There is going to be a need to massively rebuild the government,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that tries to improve the effectiveness of the federal government.

Biden’s government experience and respect for diplomacy can only go so far, current and former officials warn.

“You can’t do it overnight. You’ve got to create a relationship of trust with the career workforce,” Stier said.

Thomas-greenfield, who was the highest ranking Black diplomat at State when she was fired in 2017, is advocating a bold initiative of recruitment that focuses both on experience and on broadening diversity; the numbers of people of color in important State Department jobs has also plummeted.

“The United States needs a top-to-bottom diplomatic surge,” she wrote in a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine. “The Trump administration’s unilateral diplomatic disarmament is a reminder that it is much easier to break than to build. The country doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for a generational replenishment.”

Thomas-greenfield, 68, declined to comment for this article.