Leadership Quote by Jane Harman

Harman’s line is a provocation disguised as a staffing note: diversify, or lose the war you claim you’re fighting. The rhetoric works because it flips the usual political script. Instead of pitching diversity as moral repair, she frames it as operational necessity, a matter of tradecraft and competitive advantage. In a post-9/11 environment where “security” is the trump card, she smuggles an inclusion argument through the most hawkish doorway available.

The intent is bluntly instrumental. “Monitor and infiltrate” is not the language of workplace equity; it’s the language of human intelligence, passing, access, and credibility. Harman is saying that identity can be an asset in the field: the ability to blend into social networks, read cultural cues, speak languages without the telltale accent, and avoid the bias that comes from a closed loop of similar backgrounds. The subtext is equally sharp: a mostly male, mostly white Intelligence Community isn’t just unfair; it’s a liability that can produce blind spots, groupthink, and misread signals that get people killed.

Context matters. As a Democratic national security figure, Harman is also doing coalition politics. She’s speaking to an institution that prizes tradition and secrecy, and to lawmakers who respond to “effectiveness” more readily than “representation.” The risk, of course, is the same one embedded in her pitch: treating diversity as camouflage, as if people are hires for their perceived ability to “fit” a target population. The line succeeds because it weaponizes pragmatism, even as it reveals how pragmatism can swallow the human beings it recruits.