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Sharp suits, exotic travel, and firing a gun: That’s the image promoted by the State Department’s sleek new foreign service recruiting campaign, which seeks to hire the next generation of U.S. diplomats to “Be the face of America.”

The video even comes with a pump-up song: a sample of 1971’s “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”—an odd choice given that the song is about working for the FBI.

Sharp suits, exotic travel, and firing a gun: That’s the image promoted by the State Department’s sleek new foreign service recruiting campaign, which seeks to hire the next generation of U.S. diplomats to “Be the face of America.”

The video even comes with a pump-up song: a sample of 1971’s “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress”—an odd choice given that the song is about working for the FBI.

Not everyone is buying it. For one, despite the song, there are few women in the ad. Nor do its black-and-white vintage images show many people of color—a fact that one former top diplomat called out as a return to the stereotype of the State Department as “pale, male, Yale.”

Whether or not that resonates with applicants is another matter.

In conversations with State Department applicants and university representatives, many said there is continued eagerness to join the foreign service. But agency layoffs and Trump administration policies are weighing on some applicants’ minds, potentially limiting the pool of those willing to join the ranks of U.S. diplomats—while perhaps appealing to others.

The State Department’s campaign launched April 1 with the video featuring retro images of American diplomats. It then was followed by a Substack post by Secretary of State Marco Rubio touting the work of celebrated diplomats and American revolutionaries Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin. The State Department later released another ad focused on U.S. diplomatic history, as well as ads featuring images from the April 1 video.

The material for both campaigns draws heavily from U.S. history. Some of the images for the April 1 video are taken from a 1938 newsreel about foreign service recruitment. The audio is also from the 1938 newsreel, which features diplomat Gardiner Howland Shaw telling a group of young men that diplomats are “sample Americans.” The footage has more typically been used to highlight historical elitism in the State Department, and featured most recently in a PBS documentary on the Black diplomats who helped break down racial barriers there.

The campaign comes as the State Department enacts recruitment and training policies to align itself with the Trump administration’s agenda—including getting rid of what Rubio called “DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] excesses.” The standard test that applicants take no longer includes questions related to a candidate’s diversity—such as how often they have “interacted with people from different cultures or backgrounds”—a feature that conservative publications have argued was akin to a “political loyalty test.”

The A-100 course, the introductory training taken by all foreign service officers, will now also include lessons on “America First” foreign policy. The course also now features teachings from Angelo Codevilla, a prominent conservative scholar whose work prefigured Trump’s populist appeal.

Separately, the State Department is working to “expand the State Department’s recruitment pipeline,” according to a post on X by Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas. An accompanying photo of Rigas meeting with former foreign service officers and university representatives appears to picture Jason Bohm, dean of the........

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