In December 2006, Jeremiah S. Johnson, 25, began serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Rozdilna, Ukraine, a town near the border with Moldova. When he started, he was HIV negative. In January of this year, he had a midservice medical exam in Kiev and agreed to an HIV test. It came back positive. The Peace Corps told him to pack his bags and return to the United States.

Johnson says the Peace Corps director for Ukraine told him he had to go home because Ukraine doesn't allow HIV-positive foreigners to work there. (If so, this isn't unique. As blogger Andrew Sullivan has pointed out repeatedly, the United States has its own fair share of restrictions on HIV-positive immigrants and tourists.)

Back in Washington, Johnson had an end-of-service medical exam and received written notification that he was being "medically separated" from the Peace Corps. He contacted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the organization sent a demand letter to the Peace Corps saying that it is violating the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. (The State Department, by the way, changed its policies just this February to permit HIV-positive Americans, on a case-by-case basis, to work in the Foreign Service.)

Johnson doesn't have any physical symptoms of HIV. He and the ACLU say the Peace Corps did not assess him to determine if he could continue serving with reasonable accommodations. Additionally, his requests to be assigned to another country were denied.

What do you all think? A few questions come to mind:

• How easy would it be for Johnson to receive medical monitoring of his condition in a poor country (granted, the medical infrastructure in some Peace Corps countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, is probably stronger than in, say, Burkina Faso and Guinea)?
• What if living in an underdeveloped country aggravated his condition -- would there be liability issues?
• Does how he contracted HIV -- for example, if he was injecting recreational drugs -- make a difference (the manner in which he became HIV positive hasn't been disclosed)?

For more on controversies about the Peace Corps, check out "Think Again: Peace Corps" and some of the reactions the piece prompted.

Cindy L writes in response to "Think Again: The Peace Corps":

Heh, wonder if Robert Strauss would have jumped to the same conclusions about me. Back in '83-'85, fresh out of college, I was a 'generalist,' one of those fluent Spanish speakers sent to Africa he suggests were misplaced. Would he have read my mind and heart and assumed that I, too, was in it for subsidized travel experience or bolstering my resume. [...] [O]ur volunteer group consisted of 16 or so -- some had advanced degrees, one was at Harvard Law, another from MIT, and guess what, the specialists did not outperform the nonspecialists. The Peace Corps cannot solely be blamed for not using my Spanish, as I, already familiar with Latin culture because of my Colombian background, chose to take advantage of the travel opportunity to go to Africa--not for a some exotic fun, but because I could learn more there. It took me a whopping 3 months to become [fully conversant] in Setswana, big deal. And yes, I learned it not in the training classrooms, but in the bars, in the village, dancing, running village trails, and hanging with the natives--mostly the poor, but also the rich. [...]

[E]ven when I did accomplish good things -- development things -- the locals appreciated not what I did, but who I was. For [example], my generalist self got to the village and realized we had no electricity, no water, nothing to teach agriculture with, and most of all very low morale. So I went into the capital, taught myself how to build a water catchment tank and how to write grants, raised money, got supplies, electrified the school, put up fencing for gardening, built the swimming pool size tank. But what I was always noted for was not those things, but for getting sporting goods and starting various sporting teams that became competitive against better-supplied, established schools. It was running through the village with my students, sending them on distance runs with papers to be signed w/split times by store or bar clerks. It was speaking the language, hanging out.

Development got done, but the greatest value was the cross-cultural component, the public relations, and what *I* learned and took home with me, that will stay with me for a lifetime, affecting what I do now and how I do it. The tax dollars went into me and my growth and now I'm pouring myself out for society.

Some of the political appointees, a phenomenon I noticed as well, did cause a few problems for me, in that they made some serious cultural mistakes (like insulting my landlord, which ended up being an insult to his uncle--the chief! which ended up getting the witch doctor after me), but mostly we volunteers just ignored or derived a chuckle from the clueless appointees.

 Earlier on Passport:

• Readers react to 'Think Again: The Peace Corps'
• Is the Peace Corps any good?
• Peace Corps advice: Don't 'get drunk and fall down in a ditch' 

FP reader MC weighs in on "Think Again: The Peace Corps":

As a recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Ukraine, I would tend to agree with some of what Mr. Strauss argued in his article... while still seeing Peace Corps as serving a useful purpose. Peace Corps is in some ways the post-college study and party abroad opportunity for those with little or no work experience. In one of our training sessions, we were told half-jokingly that the only thing we could do wrong in our two years of service was to get drunk and fall down in a ditch. I believe that the comment was based on an incident that happened earlier in the year.

On the other hand, it is also a great chance for motivated young adults to gain much-needed experience in the international development field that can serve as a stepping stone to a future career. During my time in Peace Corps, I witnessed both types of volunteers: those that over-drank and generally embarrassed the United States of America, and those whose service truly made a difference in the world. I found that the best volunteers were those who were able to find small successes despite the cultural, linguistic, and bureaucratic obstacles.

There are indeed aspects of the Peace Corps that need to be reevaluated. The site placement process to determine where volunteers will serve definitely needs to be adjusted. Many times, volunteers seem to be assigned to sites at random with little input from the person affected most by the placement decision -- the volunteer.

Overall, the Peace Corps volunteer receives much more from the experience than he/she does for the country of service... In the end, the volunteer's attitude (along with a little luck) determines whether it's worth the taxpayer dollars spent and the volunteer's time.

You can check out previously posted letters here and here, or send in your own thoughts.

Yesterday, we published several reader reactions to "Think Again: Peace Corps," a new FP Web exclusive written by former Cameroon country director Robert L. Strauss.

Today, Howard Williams, a former Peace Corps volunteer and fellow former country director "with over 20 years experience as a development professional in 15 countries," writes in to say he is "dismayed" by the article:

Among the straw men are "The Peace Corps is a Diplomatic Weapon." Peace Corps is a diplomatic asset, demonstrating the goodwill and basic decency of Americans that, taken with the work of USAID, other U.S. Agencies, and their PVO and NGO partners, show we care about more than ourselves and that a sense of service to others is a basic American characteristic.

Equally flawed is the assertion that volunteers are not sent to where they are needed and that whole countries can be "graduated," no longer benefiting sufficiently from volunteers' service. Anyone who works or travels in the field, outside the capital with its agency offices and well-appointed hotels, knows that access to resources and experience managing them is uneven and that there are populations within most countries that can benefit from volunteers' assistance.

For example, many developing countries, Cameroon no doubt included, find great difficulty recruiting qualified teachers to serve in rural and remote sites. Peace Corps volunteer teachers will go there and show up at their classes regularly and well prepared –- something that local teachers often find challenging, given the other economic, social, and health demands they face each day. Students can count on PCVs to be there, in class, helping them learn.

Some countries with a greater overall resource base, like Romania, can benefit from American volunteers by their demonstrated sense of civic duty, resourcefulness, collegial approach to their work, and public transparency, traits that were not well rewarded under the former Soviet system. If a country director knowingly sent volunteers to assignments that were not needed, not useful, or not workable or that did not sufficiently engage the volunteers, as he claims, then he would have failed in his job as director. Complaints on that score are much akin to a ship's captain blaming the Navy for bad weather and rocks.

Denigrating generalizations about local people liking anyone attempting to speak their language and participate in local traditions, or that volunteers do not sufficiently demonstrate their commitment to service, are not supported by facts but by a condescending articulation about the nature of people, including the very volunteers he pledged to support.

Finally, the assertion that Peace Corps has an obligation to justify itself on a "development" yardstick, in comparison with other agencies, completely misses the point of what Peace Corps is. There simply is no such thing as a perfect "development" program. We used to tell volunteers, "Each aid agency has strengths and limitations and each has a unique role to play in development. Some have more money, some have national programs, and Peace Corps has people. You cannot judge one by comparing its limitations to the strengths of another -- and vice versa." I hope we will not lose sight of Peace Corps' unique contribution to local development, goodwill abroad, and Americans' understanding of the world in pursuit of making it look more "professional." If you ask any villager who they can count on to be there each day for them, you'll find that Peace Corps rates very well indeed.

Were you a Peace Corps volunteer or do you otherwise have strong thoughts on this topic? Read the article and comment below or send us your comments by e-mail. Requests for confidentiality will be strictly honored.

Readers are weighing in on both sides of a hard-hitting new Web exclusive by Robert L. Strauss, a former Peace Corps country director. Here's an e-mail in support of Strauss from FP reader JH:

[B]eing a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Morocco 99-00) I think he hit the nail on the head.

I recently attempted to reenlist with Peace Corps after receiving a master's degree in international development administration with an emphasis on monitoring and evaluation of development projects in Asia and the Pacific and was rejected by Peace Corps.

After being 'medically cleared,' they wanted to send me to Africa to work on HIV/AIDS projects and I stated that I would be best utilized in an area and field I'm trained in. I was then told I was cut from the application process for being 'inflexible' when it came to placement. It seems that any questioning about the placement process is taken as a threat to the organization's authority and there are plenty of recent college graduates with no idea about development who are willing to take an available spot.

I'm sorry to say that Peace Corps is not serious about development and it seems they would rather have bright eyed idealist with no experience or idea about sustainable development practices instead of skilled or trained personnel who could point out the flaws in the system and work to improve it while have a positive impact on the community.

Thanks for pointing out the flaws in Peace Corps which could be a development system for USAID, The World Bank, or the UN, but is instead a post-college hangout where little is accomplished.

And here's a complaint from CH, who volunteered in Togo from 2004 to 2007:

The first question that came to my mind as I read this was why a former Peace Corps country director, who spent four years of his life working for the organization, would be on such a vendetta. I question his motivation in publicly bashing the organization and makes me wonder what happened in Cameroon...

It seems that his main and only recommendation is for the Peace Corps to recruit the 'best of the best' to serve as volunteers. While he may be correct in this assessment, I think his opinion makes it obvious that they should do a better job recruiting the staff as well. I have a tough time imagining what my service would have been like had I been a volunteer in Cameroon during his tenure. A country director is responsible for setting the overall tone in the country where he or she is employed and I can't imagine a very positive or motivating environment under Mr. Strauss.

Despite all this, I tend to agree with many of his arguments. Peace Corps volunteers are generally fresh out of college or untrained in the field they're expected to serve in (as I was) or both. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will be ineffective as volunteers. I'm very proud of what I was able to accomplish in my three years as a volunteer in Togo. I worked with some incredibly dedicated and inspiring volunteers, some of whom did not come to Togo with any particular skills yet who excelled in their assignments.

While in no way do I believe the Peace Corps to be perfect, highly effectual or a model to be used by development organizations, it remains an incredible opportunity for Americans and, at the very least, offers volunteers the opportunity to accomplish wonderful things. It is hard not to take Mr Strauss's bitterness personally and the motivation behind his writing should be explained.

Readers, what do you think? Were you a Peace Corps volunteer? How does his analysis fit with your experience? Read the article and comment below, or send us your thoughts by e-mail. Requests for confidentiality will be strictly honored.