Trump and Rubio hold space while weighing Guilfoyle's exit
The State Department will decide the fate of its ambassador to Greece through a restorative listening process that gives the Parthenon formal standing.
As Trump and Rubio weigh firing Kimberly Guilfoyle, their ambassador to Greece, the State Department has handed the decision to a restorative listening circle. The Acropolis gets formal standing, and an olive branch serves as the talking piece. Critics say the process still centres Washington.
The State Department will decide the future of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, through a restorative listening process. The Acropolis has been granted formal standing as an affected party.
The move follows reports that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are weighing whether to fire Guilfoyle. A run of press reports has alleged improper and possibly illegal conduct before and during her tenure in Athens. A senior US official told The Guardian that both men were "extremely pissed off."
Anger is valid. Anger is also not a process.
A decision is expected this week, after Monday's federal holiday. This reporter will observe that holiday as Indigenous Peoples' Day. Facilitators have asked all parties to treat it as a pause for nervous-system regulation.
A container for accountability
The process runs to twenty-six sessions. Each one opens with a land acknowledgment, a breathing exercise and a check-in. That last part is a round in which every participant names one feeling and one bilateral trade concern.
Participants will pass an olive branch hand to hand as a talking piece. Only the person holding it may speak. Officials confirmed the branch came from a grove outside Athens, with the informed consent of the tree.
Dr. Juniper Okonkwo-Hale directs the department's newly formed Bureau of Relational Diplomacy. She said the old way of removing envoys had caused real harm.
"For too long, ambassadors have been removed through extractive, top-down firings," she said. "We want a separation that every stakeholder can metabolise. That includes the stakeholders made of marble."
New guidance asks officials to retire the phrase "you're fired." It is not an I-statement. Staff are instead encouraged to say, "I am noticing a misalignment between your path and our container."
The Parthenon speaks
The Parthenon cannot hold an olive branch. It will speak through Thalia Marnou, a trained facilitator appointed to witness its testimony. Her role is to sit with the building at dawn and listen.
"The Parthenon has been through so much. A Venetian shell blew a hole in it in 1687. Half its sculptures live in London. It would like to be asked, just once, how a foreign envoy's conduct has landed in its body."
Marnou said the monument is nearly two and a half thousand years old. In that time, she noted, no visiting diplomat has asked about its boundaries.
I want to hold space for that.
Guilfoyle has not publicly agreed to take part. Facilitators have left a floor cushion for her anyway. They describe it as an act of radical welcome, and also as a cushion.
Concerns about centring
Not everyone in the field is satisfied. Brennan Vosk, a senior fellow at the Center for Somatic Statecraft, warned that the process still centres Washington.
"Twenty-six sessions, and Greece holds the olive branch for maybe four of them," Vosk said. "Americans are doing most of the processing. That isn't repair. That's a tour group with feelings."
Vosk also flagged a structural problem. The process invites the host country to share its pain, he said, then flies that pain to Washington for a final ruling. He called this "emotional colonialism with a nicer agenda."
Other envoys are watching nervously. A group calling itself the Embassy Wellness Collective fears every ambassador may soon face review by a landmark in their host country. One member, posted to Paris, said the Eiffel Tower "has never once validated anyone."
Wednesday, at sunrise
The first session is set for Wednesday at sunrise. Facilitators chose the hour because the marble is "at its most regulated" before tour groups arrive.
Okonkwo-Hale stressed that the circle does not rule out a firing. Compassion, she said, is not the same as leniency.
"Accountability and care are not opposites," she said. "If the circle lands on termination, we will absolutely terminate. We'll just make sure she feels seen on the way to the airport."
The White House did not reply to an invitation to submit its feelings in writing. Facilitators have chosen to treat the silence as data.
