in theological and religious studies at Georgetown University and Randall Brandt, who served in the George W. Tan has hired other Wheaton graduates, including Steve Gertz, an expert on Christianity in the Middle East, who also earned a Ph.D. This includes Tan office director Al Gombis, who replaced Madeeha Ashraf, one of the department’s few Muslim American women of color and Tan’s principal deputy, Rob Ramey. They often come from a very zealous religious background and to the extent they have policy area expertise that is adjacent to it.”Īfter the hiring spree, the entire front office of GCJ is now composed of Wheaton graduates, officials said. “They are not subject matter experts in global criminal justice issues or equities. “Some of these new hires are just not qualified or competent,” the official said. “He has shown a preference for people he knows, or his deputy knows, through religious connections and through connections to Wheaton College.” “Tan displayed a marked preference, I would say a discriminatory preference, based on religion-namely, evangelical Christians-and nepotism,” said one State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. While some of the recent hires have extensive experience in diplomacy or religious freedom, several officials described other appointees as unqualified for their positions. However, it appears likely that incoming President Joe Biden’s State Department will be able to replace them with its own picks, as most have not served long enough to obtain permanent contracts. The sweeping hires will leave the Biden administration with a depleted stable of experts on mass atrocities, including war crimes and genocide, and international justice, hampering its efforts to rebuild a department that has traditionally sought to hold the world’s worst mass murderers accountable for their crimes. Some said it amounts to a form of eleventh-hour affirmative action program for candidates from evangelical universities, think tanks, and advocacy groups. Some State Department officials who privately raised concerns about the hiring spree said the promotion of such candidates is emblematic of a wider campaign by the Trump administration to reward loyalists and representatives of a critical political constituency-Christian conservatives-across the federal government, even in the final months of the administration. The broader hiring spree has had the effect of stacking an office that had traditionally focused on pursuing accountability for perpetrators of mass atrocities into a platform to defend religious minorities, with a particular focus on defense of Christians abroad. Notably, it plays a crucial role in determining how and when the United States concludes that campaigns of ethnic cleansing or genocide have taken place-an important policy signal that has drawn international attention and response to persecution against minority populations in Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, and elsewhere. policies on preventing and responding to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The GCJ plays a substantial role in crafting U.S. During the past year, Tan has nearly doubled the size of the small GCJ office, hiring at least nine staffers, some of them graduates of Wheaton College, the Illinois-based evangelical Christian university where Tan earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
The hiring blitz began under Morse Tan, who was appointed ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice in December 2019. “State has been stonewalling on basic answers as to just how many people have been hired and on what authority for weeks,” the aide said. One congressional aide familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the State Department hasn’t provided adequate answers to its inquiries. The hiring pattern in the Office of Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) drew the attention of lawmakers, including members and staff on the Democratic-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, who raised concerns over the qualifications of some candidates and questioned the hiring spree as the Trump administration winds down. In the final months of the Trump administration, the State Department office that handles genocide and mass atrocity prevention has hired a slew of candidates, some with sparse qualifications and some of whom attended the same university as the head of the office, officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said.
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