U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is shown in 1964. |
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Washington -- In her statement on International
Education Week 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called
attention to the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright Program,
describing it as the "flagship international exchange
program sponsored by the U.S. government."
"With a mandate to promote mutual understanding,
the Fulbright Program exemplifies the power of international
education," she said in the November 3 statement.
The driving force behind the program --
today a family of organized international exchange initiatives
-- was J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. As the nation’s
youngest university president during the time he led the
University of Arkansas (1939-1941), Fulbright observed firsthand
how young people living, playing and studying together transcend
their differences and build strong friendships grounded
in mutual understanding.
Elected to the House of Representatives
in 1942 and the Senate two years later, Fulbright worked
to expand his original insight to the international arena.
As World War II ended in 1945, he observed that the Treasury
was receiving payments from other nations for surplus U.S.
property left overseas. He introduced legislation to use
those funds for the "promotion of international good
will through the exchange of students in the fields of education,
culture and science." On August 1, 1946, President
Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law, and by 1948 the
first American participants were studying overseas.
Subsequent legislation, including most notably
the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961, expanded and consolidated
the program. Today, the Fulbright Program awards about 4,500
grants annually, in some 140 countries. It has awarded grants
to more than 250,000 individuals, three-fifths of them non-Americans,
and boasts of 35 Nobel Prize-winning alumni -- more than
any other academic program -- and 65 winners of the Pulitzer
Prize, awarded for achievement in print journalism, literary
works and music.
In the year 2001 alone, one Fulbright alumnus
(Alejandro Toledo) was elected president of Peru and others
were appointed foreign ministers in Brazil, Poland and South
Korea. That same year, two American Fulbright participants
shared the Nobel Prize in economics while others won the
Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, the National Book
Award in fiction and the Grammy (awarded for recoded music)
for classical contemporary composition. Scores of other
program alumni have contributed to their societies and cultivated
global understanding through government service, teaching
and scholarship and achievements in the arts and in nearly
every walk of life.
DIFFERENT FULBRIGHT PROGRAMS
The “Fulbright Program for U.S. Students”
awards grants that afford recent college graduates and master’s
or doctoral candidates the opportunity to study, perform
independent or field research, or gain teaching assistantship
experience overseas. They meet, work and share daily life
with residents of their host countries.
The “Fulbright for Non-U.S. Students”
arranges placement in U.S. academic institutions for more
than 1,300 “Foreign Fulbright Fellows” each
year. These graduate students and developing professionals
and artists interact freely with Americans, contributing
to an atmosphere of openness, academic integrity, and intellectual
freedom.
Fulbright opportunities do not end at graduation.
Each year, some 800 faculty and professionals from around
the world receive “Fulbright Scholar Program”
grants for advanced research and university lecturing in
the United States. A “Fulbright Teacher and Administrator
Exchange Program”allows U.S. and foreign teachers
to exchange places for a semester or an academic year. Students
are exposed to different points of view, and teachers return
home with a more global perspective.
In J. William Fulbright's words, the program
"aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more
reason and a little more compassion into world affairs and
thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at
last to live in peace and friendship."
NOT JUST A U.S. PROGRAM
With the growth of Fulbright exchanges,
responsibility for selecting and funding participants has
expanded beyond the United States. The Department of State's
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs administers the
overall program, in cooperation with a number of nonprofit
organizations and 50 binational “Fulbright Commissions.”
Each commission contains an equal number
of U.S. and foreign nationals and is funded jointly by the
United States and a host foreign government. It receives
exchange requests from local institutions and proposes an
annual country program, setting the numbers and categories
of Fulbright grants for that nation. (In countries without
a commission, the public affairs section of the U.S. Embassy
develops and supervises the Fulbright Program.) In this
way, programs are tailored to meet the needs of all participating
nations.
For President Bill Clinton, speaking in
1996 on the program’s 50th anniversary, fellow Arkansan
Fulbright "gave the gift of understanding that the
only way to lasting peace is for people to understand one
another -- the simple act of giving and receiving the best
that each of us has to offer. ... [T]he Fulbright Program
has stood as a proud symbol of our nation’s fundamental
commitment to that ideal.”
That commitment continues. In 1976, Bangladeshi
Fulbright participant Mohammad Yunus founded the Grameen
Bank to provide collateral-free microcredit to his nation's
rural poor. In 2006, Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize
for his work. "Fulbright provided me the bridge to
cross. I saw how things can be done differently in a different
society. ... I learned lessons which stood me in good stead
when building up the Grameen Bank," he said.
Additional
information about the Fulbright Program, Rice's
November 3 statement and biographical
information on J. William Fulbright are available on
the State Department Web site.
Michael Jay Friedman
Washington File Staff Writer
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