The State Department Will Never be Diverse Unless it Pays its Interns

Foreign Policy explains why:

“Everyone pretty much knows that Washington wouldn’t work the way that it does without unpaid interns,” said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. “Most of the people that we work with today have gotten to where they are in large part because they had been able to accept internships that weren’t paid.” …

As Washington’s national security apparatus goes through a reckoning on diversity and inclusion, more current and former interns are starting to speak out on the system’s most glaring problem: Getting a job in government often requires unpaid internships, many of which are in Washington, one of the most expensive cities in the country. This shuts out most of the next generation of potential national security experts at the outset. So why, everyone seems to be asking agencies and organizations in the foreign-policy field, can’t you just pay your interns?

Biden’s State Department supported legislation to pay interns, but Senate Republicans blocked it, according to Foreign Policy. The magazine quoted an unidentified source who said, “Senate Republicans would not clear on any language that included too strong of a pro-diversity message or paid internships for low-income students.”