The Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership represents a radical change for Peace Corps and Peace Corps Response for two equally important reasons. The first is that these new “GHSPVS’ will receive generous financial compensation for a year of service, in addition to the allowances and benefits afforded the “traditional” PCV and PCRV. The second reason is that these GHSPVS will treat and provide clinical services, as well as training and teaching.  Let us look first at the “benefits package.”  From the concept paper:

Historically, many health professionals interested in providing service - either domestically or abroad to socially and economically disadvantaged populations - face financial challenges from compounding educational debt and personal commitments. GHSC aims to build on the legacy of domestic federal programs such as the National Health Service Corps to assist with education indebtedness. GHSC will provide loan repayment support to eligible individuals for each year served in the Global Health Service Partnership and health service abroad.In addition, the Global Health Service Corps stipend will be available to help offset other personal financial burden like mortgages. Our goal is to encourage service by the best-qualified individuals, including those who may have financial constraints to service. The GHSC will provide stipends of up to $30,000 (this amount is subject to change) for each year served in the joint GHSP program to individuals with documented educational loans or other personal financial burdens.  Individuals with educational loans less than $30,000 will receive a stipend to cover the full amount of their remaining education loans.The stipend application process for individuals seeking support for expenses other than loans is under development.In addition, the Global Health Service Corps stipend will be available to help offset other personal financial burden like mortgages.Our goal is to encourage service by the best-qualified individuals, including those who may have financial constraints to service. The GHSC will provide stipends of up to $30,000 (this amount is subject to change) for each year served in the joint GHSP program to individuals with documented educational loans or other personal financial burdens. Individuals with educational loans less than $30,000 will receive a stipend to cover the full amount of their remaining education loans. The stipend application process for individuals seeking support for expenses other than loans is under development.

Dr. Victoria Kenny, daughter of Senator Kenny  is the creator of the program.  She directs a global health program at Harvard Medical School and works at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Global Health. Certainly, the need for health professionals in the Developing World is acute and the Doctor will qualified to support such an effort. But, Dr. Kerry was evidently unaware of Peace Corps decades long efforts in this field. and aspects of the new program reflect this apparent ignorance. Dr. Kerry was quoted in a recent NPR interview as stating that “The Peace Corps doesn’t have the technical capacity to do clinical medicine and nursing.”  But, this is not why Peace Corps doesn’t do clinical medicine and nursing.  From  Peace Corps instructions, revised in 2005

Technical Guideline 310 / In-Country Health and Safety Training

Section 2 (“Elements of Health Training”), where the concluding paragraph reads:

“The PCMOs also need to remind the PC staff, Peace Corps Trainees, and Peace Corps Volunteers that V/Ts are not authorized to participate in direct health care activities.  These activities include, but are not limited to, participating in immunization programs, attending or otherwise assisting with childbirths, performing phlebotomy, insertion of intravenous catheters, and other activities that may place them at risk for exposure to blood or body fluids.”

Yet, the concept paper makes no mention of this instruction.  Rather, it apparently assumes that the problem is with liability and licensure.  The paper states:

iii. International license requirements and liability issues

The Peace Corps Act provides for Volunteers to deliver direct medical care and treatment. Peace Corps Volunteers do not currently deliver direct medical care in the communities in which they serve. Peace Corps will need to work with host country governments to ensure in-country partnering medical facilities, schools, and health teaching institutions accept reciprocal licensure to practice and deliver direct medical treatment and care in country. Provision of malpractice insurance or indemnity will be required.

One of the most important lessons from the decades of Peace Corps work in the health field is that in almost all developing countries, there can be a lack of medical infrastructure to support the safe delivery of medical care.  HIV/AIDS made this situation all the more dangerous.  The prohibition against participating in direct health activities, is not a function of the competence of the PCV in a health program, rather it is to protect that Volunteer.

I, for one, believe that Peace Corps Washington, particularly in the early days, was very slow to realize the consequences of the lack of adequate medical infrastructure.  The world was saved from small pox, with dirty needles.  It was not just ignorance of the importance of sterilization of all medical instruments and antiseptic procedures in hospitals and clinics, but the lack of a consistent supply of clean water and energy to support these essential practices. I could find no documents that describe these problems.  But, that is very typical of Peace Corps. I speak only from personal experience and evidence reflected in the oral histories and memoirs of RPCVs.  For many nurses, this represented a very real ethical conflict because they  were assigned to hospitals and clinics where they knew that the situations could be dangerous for patients.  The nurses lacked the authority, as well as the resources, to change the situations. I also believe that if Peace Corps Washington had been more alert to this dangerous situation, in the early days, the persistence of what really were vectors for blood borne diseases, like HIV/AIDS, could have been addressed.

Starting June of 2013, the Peace Corps Global Health Partnership plans to place ten to twelve medical professionals in each of three countries; Uganda, Malawi, and Tanzania.  It will be the responsibility of the Peace Corps staff, in-country, to choose the sites for these medical placements.  The presumption being that safe medical environments can be found for all the GHSPVS and that the Peace Corps staff, that “lacks the technical capacity” to support clinical medicine and nursing will, nonetheless, be able to identify such places.

My information on this program comes from the website of the Global Health; the NPR interview and current responses to FOIAs from Peace Corps.  If any of this information is incorrect or not current, I would welcome corrections.

The Peace Corps official website has information on the program: www.peacecorps.gov/response/globalhealth/?from=hp_spotlight

There is now a  new and radically different role for Peace Corps Response.  The change is described in  ”Concept Paper for the Peace Corps Global Health Service Partnership.”

To download the PDF, use this link:_Concept paper on the Peace Corps Global Health Partnership

If there is a Republican takeover in the White House in November, the transition at Peace Corps could be even more difficult for serving Volunteers. The agency is already experiencing changes because of the early and unexpected resignation of Director Aaron Williams, (Dominion Republic 67-69) who headed Peace Corps for three years. The agency is in the capable hands of Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; but she is still only the acting Director.

In a recent evaluation, the Inspector General of the Peace Corps found that transitions caused unique problems at Peace Corps because of the so-called Five Year Rule. One problem was the lack of succession planning.  The OIG made specific recommendations to correct these problems. The then Director Williams accepted them and was to send to the OIG, in August of this year, the policy changes and perhaps even proposed legislation all designed to implement the recommendations. However, this has been delayed because of Williams’ resignation.There is certainly reason to assume that work is being done on the recommendations, but it is not clear when they will be implemented. Nor, can it be known how a new administration would respond to the recommendations.

Over thirty of the decision-making positions at Peace Corps, including the Director and Deputy Director, are political appointments.  A change from a Democratic White House to a Republican White House or vice versa, mandates these staff changes and has had program consequences in the past. Joseph  Blatchford, the first Nixon appointee to direct the Peace Corps, deemphasized programs such as Community development. Instead, he developed New Directions, a policy placing Volunteers in structured jobs.  Nixon also created  the umbrella agency, ACTION.  Peace Corps was demoted to a division within the agency, that of International Operations, and lost much of its autonomy.

Ten year later, the Democrats took over.  President Carter appointed Sam Brown as Peace Corps Director. Brown reversed Directions and mandated that programs focus on basic needs. For example, teaching English was out.  The dramatic switch from one political party to another was not to cause such major policy shifts in the future.

Still, I have argued in a previous post, Danger: Transitions Ahead, that some of the most horrific crimes against serving Volunteers occurred during such political party changes. I gave as the examples; the murder of Deborah Gardner and the failure of the Peace Corps to bring justice to her killer, fellow PCV Dennis Priven (1976-77); the kidnapping of Richard Starr by FARC (1977) and the failure of the Peace Corps to secure his release; the failure of Peace Corps to realize that Walter Poirier III was missing (2000) or subsequently to find him; and, finally, the tragic murder of Kate Puzey (2009).  The outrage over this crime led, ultimately, to the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. Provisions in that law are designed to protect Volunteers. It is hoped that these new legal mandates will continue to provide for safety and security for Volunteers during transitions.

Prior to 1985, the political affiliation of a candidate for Country Director was a factor to be considered in the appointment.  The law was changed in 1985, but Country Directors are still appointed and serve at the discretion of the Peace Corps Director, who remains a political appointee.  This can be a complicating factor during times of transition. Look at the following example.

J. Larry Brown (no relation) was a Peace Corps Volunteer in India, 1967 -69 and then served as Assistant Director at Peace Corps in the late 70s.  He had a career as a “professor and scholar of domestic hunger and poverty, much of it at Harvard School of Public Health”. Brown was a lifelong Democrat, but he was chosen to be Country Director of Uganda in 2008 by Republican appointee and fellow RPCV from India, Ron Tschetter. As a political appointee, it was appropriate for Tschetter to resign the day that President Obama was inaugurated.  The Director who had appointed Brown was no longer in office and interim staff were in charge. It was nine months before Aaron Williams was sworn in. In his memoir, Peasants Come Last -A Memoir of the Peace Corps at Fifty, Brown describes the difficulty he had as a Country Director dealing with the Washington bureaucracy during this time of transition.  He emphasized how the Washington DC administrative demands made it hard to adequately plan to meet needs of the host country.

There has to be a better way to make sure that the Peace Corps personnel system supports the three goals, at all times. Suggestions?

The recently published Inspector General’s Report, Final Evaluation Report: Impacts of the Five-Year Rule on Operations of the  Peace Corps (IG-12-05-E)  focused on the problems caused by the so-called Five Year Rule.  But the report did acknowledge the effect of the Peace Corps’ political appointment structure. I think the observations are critically important. Do you?  From the IGO report:

Staffs’ concerns regarding the Peace Corps’ political appointment structure

Throughout the course of this evaluation many interviewees expressed their beliefs and attitudes regarding the effect that political appointees, particularly appointees with no previous Peace Corps experience, were having on the operations of the agency. Many respondents insisted that it was important for our evaluation to consider the combined effect on the agency’s operations of constant staff turnover and the agency’s political appointment structure. The commonly expressed reasoning respondents articulated was that these two features of the agency’s personnel structure—high turnover created by the FYR and the high number of political appointments managing the agency had combined to create a vicious cycle that harmed the strategic direction of the agency, as well as the ability of staff to function effectively in carrying out whatever strategy was in place at the time. Assessing the merit of this sentiment was outside the scope of our evaluation.

(Note: The highlighting is mine)  To read the entire report;

pc_final_evaluation_report_on_impacts_of_the_five_year_rule_ig1205e

The unexpected and early resignation of Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams and the possible change in the political party winning the White House in November may mean trouble ahead for the Peace Corps.  Four of the most egregious crimes against serving Peace Corps Volunteers occurred during a time of transition or anticipated transition from one political party in power to the other. The extraordinary number of political appointees in the Peace Corps agency and the always rapid staff turnover due to the Five Year Rule may have contributed to a lack of support to Volunteers during such times. Four crimes over more than thirty years do not a pattern make, nor are these by any means the only crimes against serving Volunteers. What they do is highlight the inadequacy of the agency’s response associated with a time of political transition.

The mid-70s were a time of political turmoil. Under threat of impeachment, Republican President Nixon resigned in August of 1974, and Vice President Ford assumed the office.  Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter successfully challenged Republican Ford in the Presidential election of 1976.  He took office in January of 1977. In October of 1976, PCV teacher, Dennis Priven, murdered Deborah Gardner, a fellow PCV teacher in Tonga. Priven was tried and convicted in the host country courts.The sentence could have been death by hanging. However, Peace Corps intervened and persuaded the Tonga government to release Priven into the custody of the United States government, with the understanding that Priven would be committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. Priven was returned to the US in January of 1977, the closing days of the Ford administration. For whatever reason, when Priven refused to be hospitalized, he was allowed to simply walk away from the Peace Corps agency. He suffered no criminal penalties.  Gardner’s family was not even notified of his release. The crime, here, was not the actual murder, but the release of the criminal.  Phillip Weiss, investigative journalist, has written of this tragedy in his book, American Taboo. Read an excellent review of the book, by RPCV Bob Shacochis at: http://www.salon.com/2004/07/20/weiss/

At almost the same time, February 11, 1977, the insurgency group, FARC, kidnapped PCV Richard Starr, a botanist serving in Colombia. Sam Brown was the newCarter appointment to head up the federal agency ACTION. Peace Corps was a subdivision of that agency. Neither the Peace Corps nor the State Department were successful in securing Starr’s release. He was held for three years, before columnist Jack Anderson was able to privately arrange ransom and Starr was finally released. (See: Remember with Honor http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/467/2019711.html)

The year 2000 was another year of political uncertainly. The Democrats had been in power for eight years. The Electoral College vote to determine the winner was not decided until December of 2000. Republican Bush was declared the winner. Sometime in December of 2000, Bolivian PCV Walter Poirier III went missing. Peace Corps Bolivia had lost track of the Poirier. Despite the efforts of his parents and the belated response of Peace Corps, Poirier is still listed as missing.

In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama won the presidency and the Democrats took over the White House after eight years of Republican rule. All political appointees at the Peace Corps, including the Director, resigned on January 21^st 2009. A new Director was not confirmed until the following August. In March, PCV Katy Puzey was murdered in her site in Benin. Again, Peace Corps was criticized for its handling of this crime. The outrage over this crime led, ultimately, to the Katy Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. Provisions in that law are designed to protect Volunteers. It is hoped that these new legal mandates will continue to provide for safety and security for Volunteers during such transitions.

The Inspector General of the Peace Corps has reviewed the unique Five Year Rule and made recommendations to Director Williams.  Sometime in August, Williams will announce policy changes and proposed legislative changes.  I would urge the RPCV community to be knowledgeable about the review.

Here are the Pros and Cons of the Five Year Rule according to the Inspector General of the Peace Corps

PRO:  The Executive Summary listed the advantages of the Five Year Rule (FYR).

The following is quoted from that summary.

• Peace Corps’ staff asserted that the FYR results in a mission-driven, energetic, and optimistic workforce attracted to the Peace Corps in spite of the time-limited appointment.

• The high rate of staff turnover driven by the FYR has allowed the agency to hire extensively from the returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) population–one of the stated goals behind the establishment of the FYR. Just over 50 percent of all USDHs employed by Peace Corps from 2000 to 2010 were RPCVs and the Peace Corps has hired RPCVs throughout its history.

• The intent of the FYR to prevent Peace Corps’ employees from making life-long careers at the agency has also been met, with rare exceptions. Just one percent of USDH employees worked for Peace Corps from 2000 to 2010 without being subject to the FYR.

CON: The Executive Summary also listed the disadvantages of the Five Year Rule

(FYR).  The following is quoted from that summary.

• _Contributed to an abbreviated average tenure of USDH employees throughout the agency, well short of five years. Average tenure of direct hires over the past 10 years has been just three years. Abbreviated employee tenure and accelerated turnover have compromised the agency’s institutional memory and exacerbated a range of other management challenges.

• _Made it very difficult for the Peace Corps to manage its personnel system in keeping with federal standards for human capital management and merit system principles. Accelerated employee turnover and abbreviated employee tenure have undermined the agency’s ability or weakened its incentives to: retain employees on the basis of their performance; plan for their eventual succession; ensure continuity of needed skills and abilities; provide training and education to improve performance; and deploy its workforce efficiently.

• _Impeded, rather than facilitated, innovation at the Peace Corps. Staff reported that the accelerated pace of employee turnover, short average tenure, and insufficient institutional memory have conspired against the agency’s efforts to identify, develop, test, and successfully implement innovative ideas.

• _Compromised the agency’s ability to attract and retain highly qualified personnel to perform core contracting, financial management, information technology, human resources management, and medical support functions. The rationale for the FYR appears less relevant for offices charged with supporting the agency’s infrastructure, performing compliance-related functions, or ensuring a high quality Volunteer health care program.

• _Exacerbated the already difficult challenge of managing the frequent transitions of overseas USDH personnel. Despite the agency’s efforts to minimize vacancies in key direct hire positions overseas, over the past 10 years there have been more than 180 vacancies lasting at least 30 days. Staff reported that direct hire vacancies overseas had negative impacts on staff workload and morale, Volunteer support, programming and training, and other areas.

• _Weakened the agency’s culture of performance management. Although the 30-month tour has allowed managers to easily separate under-performing employees at their end-of-tour dates, staff reported that the 30-month tour has also allowed supervisors to avoid the unpleasant and time-consuming task of confronting and managing under-performing employees during their service.

• _Not led to RPCVs taking leadership positions throughout the agency to the extent originally envisioned by the architects of the FYR, despite the fact that the agency has hired extensively from the RPCV population. Based on data from 2000 to 2010, only 24 percent of the agency’s senior staff positions have been filled by RPCVs.

• _Created a disincentive for the agency to invest in staff development and undermined the agency’s ability to develop and promote the talent it has.

• _Ironically, led to inflexibility in the agency’s personnel system that has compromised the potential of the original ‘in-up-out’ idea to promote high-achieving staff up through the ranks over a longer period of eight to ten years.

• _Increased costs of managing personnel turnover and contributed to an inefficient use of the agency’s workforce. For the five-year period from 2005 through 2009, we estimated that the FYR contributed between $12.6 million and $15.5 million out of $20.7 million in turnover management costs.

To download the PDF  and read the entire report, here is the text to link to: .Office of the Inspector General’s Evaluation Report on Impacts of the Five Year Rule

One of the commerative events for the 50^th Anniversary was a Panel discussion on March 17, 2011  “The early years of the Peace Corps”, featuring a great speech by  Bill Moyer. This is a good time to be reminded of those days and those men who first made the unique organization possible.  This is a good time because Peace Corps is facing a possible reorganization.

It is still possible for RPCVs to obtain a free DVD copy. Karen Chaput, the Director of Video Production in the Peace Corps Office of Communication is currently on maternity leave.

In her absence, Lee Gillenwater is the person to contact at this email to request a copy.

lgillenwater@peacecorps.gov

The Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps spent a year evaluating the impact of the Five Year Rule.  This is the first public report that I could find that references the original memo from Dr. Robert Textor in 1961.  That memo became the founding document for Peace Corps Five Year Rule.  In this evaluation, the evaluators begin with the original memo and show that the intent was to link limited tenure and the employment of former Peace Corps Volunteers.  It also emphasizes that Dr. Textor never recommended that tenure be limited to five years.  He recommended perhaps eight years. The report describes both positive and negative impacts of the rule and makes recommendations to Director Williams to formulate polices and procedures to correct the negative impact.  It is vital that the Peace Corps community become knowledgeable about this report and it possible implications for policy and law.

To download the PDF, use this Text to link to:Final Evaluation Report on the Impacts of the Five Year Rule

UPDATE:  Peace Corps has just released the long awaited Inspector General’s review of the Five Year Rule.  To read this report in its PDF form, go to peacecorps.gov; scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Office of the Inspector General. The report will be the first one listed, Click on it for the PDF. I expect that a direct link will be posted to Peace Corps Worldwide, soon.

Of remarkable note is the fact that the Inspector General’s report quotes extensively from Dr. Textor’s original memo.

Dr. Robert B. Textor proposed in an memo on December 11, 1961 a personnel policy for the Peace Corps. In 2011, he revisited the memo and wrote an essay describing his memo and the analysis that promoted it.  The entire essay can be and should be read at: http://www.stanford.edu/~rbtextor/History_of_In_Up_Out_Policy.pdf

I would like to quote from that essay:

“This essay deals with my two principal efforts to help the organization turn the young president’s vision into reality:

• *To produce a model for an excellent training program for the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs).
• *To produce a fundamental change in the Peace Corps’ personnel policy, so that it would be permanently led by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) on a rotating basis and thereby avoid bureaucratic senescence. My effort was embodied in the “In-Up-Out” policy that the Peace Corps adopted (administratively in 1963, and legally in 1965), which was based on my original memo on this subject, dated December 11, 1961.”

From the actual memo:

“2. Recommendations for Implementation During 1962:

b. Recommend that the new autonomous PC Personnel system provide that:

(1) Almost all substantive jobs in PC should be filled, as soon as possible, by qualified PCV alumni. A “substantive job is a job -high or low - which influences the shape and gusto of PC programs, e.g. officers in Recruiting. Selection, Training, and Program Development and Operations, including overseas Representatives.

(2) PCV alumni, and all other staff employees, should follow the principle of “in-up-out.” The law should set a maximum number of years - perhaps eight years - after which all staffers are required to leave and find jobs.”

But when Peace Corps proposed legislation in 1965 to allow the creation of a unique personnel system, the tenure limit proposed was only five years and there was no provision in the actual legislation for the priority hiring of RPCVs. The rationale for the limited tenure was described as a policy that “would permit a constant inflow of new blood and ideas.”  But it was not specified exactly from where this “inflow of new blood and ideas” would originate. In a letter to Chairman Fulbright Chairman of the Senate Committee Foreign Relations, dated May 9th, 1965, Sargent Shriver gave yet another reason for limited tenure:

“This system will, insofar as it is humanly possible, eliminate or reduce artificial barriers between our paid staff’s terms and conditions of service and those of our volunteers.”

This letter  and the analysis of other provisions of the law can be found as follows:

PEACE CORPS ACT - AMENDMENTS   SENATE REPORT (Foreign Relations Committee) No. 267, May 27, 1965 (To accompany S. 2054)

II. PROVISIONS OF THE BILL

6.  It would authorize use of Foreign Service Act authority for appointment of the U.S.-based Peace Corps staff, thus creating a unified personal system for the foreign and domestic staff.

IV. SECTION -BY-SECTION ANALYSIS

Sections 5 and 6

For some time the Peace Corps has been considering the desirability of a personnel system which would place the Peace Corps staff in essentially the same position as that of the volunteer: serving for a limited period of time and then moving on to give the same opportunity of service to others.  The application of Foreign Service Act authorities to the Washington staff would permit a constant inflow of new blood and ideas by allowing administrative flexibility which is not possible under the restrictions of the civil service system.

The Peace Corps has advised that it plans to limit appointments to 21/2 years with extension in appropriate cases to the maximum of 5 years allowed under the bill.

If there are any public records explaining why priority hiring of RPCVs was not included in this legislation, I could not find them. I could find no public record that advocated that the Peace Corps agency be staffed by RPCVs on a rotating basis other than Dr. Textor’s 1961 memo.

It may well be that in the context of 1965, it was felt that such formal statement of policy was unnecessary. For example, in response to a request from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Appendix A of the record of the Hearings before the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE -Eighty-Ninth Congress, First Session on S. 1368, April 26. 1965, Peace Corps listed the names of all RPCVS working for the federal government and the federal agencies where they were employed.  At Peace Corps, in Washington, in Training Programs, and overseas, there were already 198 RPCVs employed.

In 1966, the periodical, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 365, The Peace Corps. May 1966, devoted its entire issue to discussion of the Peace Corps.  The Journal included an article by Harris Wofford, “The Future of the Peace Corps.” He alluded to the “policy of priority to former Volunteers in filling staff positions” and predicted “by 1970, former Volunteers should, in fact, be running the Peace Corps from nearly the top to the bottom.”

But by 1970, a Republican administration was in power. In June of 1971, President Nixon created a new comprehensive agency, ACTION.  Peace Corps was submerged into a subdivision of the new organization and became IO, International Operations. The first use of the so-called “Five Year Flush” was to consolidate positions to create a more streamlined bureaucracy in the new agency and to replace staff from the 60s, who had exceeded the five-year limit and were not necessarily viewed as supportive of the new policies. It was not until 1993, that a RPCV, Carol Bellamy, was actually appointed Director and was “running the agency.”

Recent legislation exempting safety and security staff, and members of the Inspector General’s staff, from its provisions, have modified the Five-Year Rule.  Staff identified as “experts” are also not subject to the Five-Year Rule. The Peace Corps Director may make a certain percentage of appointments for longer than five years. In the early 70s, there was an expansion of overseas administration to include the employment of host country nationals. In order to provide continuity, HCN are exempted from the Five -Year Rule. Recently returned former PCVs are entitled to a non-competitive consideration when applying for federal positions, including those with the Peace Corps agency. The Five-Year Rule does provide for continuing staff turnovers that does “open up” positions.

Current Peace Corps Director Williams did not think that current law would allow for making successful completion of Peace Corps Volunteer service a prerequisite for employment with Peace Corps. So the Five -Year rule remains but it is essentially divorced from any systematic policy to “priority hire” or otherwise utilize the “transcultural experience” of the returning Peace Corps Volunteer in the operations of the Peace Corps.

Next:  Pros and Cons of the Five-Year Rule

The Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps will publish its yearlong review of the “Five Year Rule” within the next “two to three weeks.” Fifty years ago, Dr. Robert Textor authored the original “In, Up, and Out” memo that morphed into the Five Year Rule. Unfortunately, he is scheduled for surgery on June 29^th.  He made a reasonable request to be allowed to see the final review before his surgery. The Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps considered the request for two days and then denied it without explanation.

Dr. Robert Textor was a young Anthropologist who was called to Peace Corps Washington in June of 1961 to consult the fledging agency. As an Anthropologist who had done field work in Thailand, Textor knew how critically important “transcultural experience” was. He wanted to make sure that Peace Corps Washington could capture the “transcultural experience” of Volunteers returning after their service. He authored the Memo “In, Up and Out” in December of 1961. It would become a founding document of the Peace Corps. It called for limited tenure for employment at Peace Corps to ensure that there would always be opportunities open for RPCVs to bring their field experience to staff positions. That policy morphed into the “Five Year Rule.” To read the original memo, Shriver’s handwritten notations on the document, and Textor’s commentary on the historic context, go to: http://www.stanford.edu/~rbtextor/History_of_In_Up_Out_Policy.pdf

Dr. Textor trained Volunteers for Thailand I and II. Dr. Textor is a Professor Emeritus of Stanford University and has remained engaged with the Peace Corps community. In 1966, he edited the classic Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps. He made the book available online in commendation of the 50^th Anniversary. The book can be downloaded at: http://www.stanford.edu/~rbtextor/Cultural_Frontiers_of_the_Peace_Corps.pdf

I think it is unfortunate that the Office of Inspector General was unable to extend to Dr. Textor the courtesy of a few days early access to its report. Unless the report is released almost immediately, and that seems unlikely, Dr. Textor will have to wait until after his surgery and the necessary recuperation period to see how the Office of the Inspector General reviewed the policy he helped to create. Also, the Peace Corps community will have to wait for Dr. Textor’s critically important review of the report.

I certainly in no way would want to question the bureaucratic prerogatives of the Inspector General Office of the Peace Corps. I join others, however, in hoping that the bureaucratic officials would revisit the decision to deny early access to Dr. Textor.  Ironically, I suspect that  one of the rationales for recommending changes to the tenure policy will be the “lack of institutional memory.” In this particular case, Dr. Textor is the embodiment of “institutional memory.” One might argue that the problem is not “lack of institutional memory,” but the efforts to obscure it.