FIFTY YEARS OF FULBRIGHT PROGRAM EXCHANGES

by Kathleen Hug

August 1996 is the anniversary month

Washington -- It was 50 years ago this month that the Fulbright Educational Exchange Program was established, the U.S. government's premier educational exchange program and the best known of the exchange activities of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

In the years since its founding, the Fulbright Program has enabled nearly a quarter of a million people from 140 nations and innumerable disciplines to live, study, conduct research, and teach abroad. Since the first U.S.-Spanish educational exchange agreement in 1958, the Fulbright program has enabled almost 5,000 Spaniards to study and teach in the United States and some 1,500 Americans to pursue graduate work and research in Spain. The program now counts on funding from three Spanish government ministries, the United States government, and 27 private institutions and companies from both countries. Individuals are selected on the basis of academic or professional qualifications and potential, plus ability and willingness to share ideas and experiences with people of diverse cultures.

While the majority of Fulbrighters are graduate students or scholars, many professionals from outside of academe participate: lawyers, judges, doctors, scientists, architects, engineers, journalists, musicians, artists, poets, business executives, public servants.

Winners of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarships populate university faculties, head corporations, win Nobel Prizes, and excel in many fields. And the Fulbright Program, which operates as a public/private partnership, has been a real bargain over the last half-century -- its cost would currently run the U.S. Department of Defense for fewer than four days.

"I have heard from country after country in this Fulbright anniversary year of the enormous respect and affection the world has for (the late) Senator Fulbright and the program he created," says former USIA Director Joseph Duffey. "The program stands as America's greatest contribution to international understanding and world peace."

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The legislation creating the Fulbright Program was introduced following World War II by J. William Fulbright, then the junior senator from Arkansas. His purpose: To reduce the chances of another world war by increasing mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those of other nations, and to create a more peaceful and prosperous future for all nations. "The prejudices and misconceptions, which exist in every country regarding foreign people," Fulbright said, "are the great barrier to any system of government."

Fulbright had traveled throughout Eastern Europe and studied at Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar, experiences that had broadened his horizons and enabled him to know the value of educational exchanges firsthand. Why not create a program that would encompass the whole world, with students from as many countries as possible studying in the United States, and young Americans studying and living and getting to know Europe, Asia, Africa, the rest of the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific? The measure that Fulbright introduced to the U.S. Congress, "to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and the people of other countries," was signed by President Harry Truman on August 1, 1946.

Senator Fulbright ingeniously proposed how the bold, visionary program could be funded at modest expense. At the end of World War II, millions of pieces of surplus property were left in warehouses and supply depots all over the world -- materials that had been supplied by the United States as part of the Lend-Lease program; the countries to which they had been loaned were supposed to repay the United States for them. Why not let each country buy surplus property in its own currency, and then use the money to pay for the expenses of U.S. citizens studying in that country and for the transportation of the country's own young people to the United States for study there?

The plan worked extremely well. The first Fulbright exchanges took place in 1948, when 65 Americans went overseas and 35 foreign students and one professor traveled to the United States. These individuals, and the more than 200,000 who have followed them, have contributed in innumerable ways both great and small, directly and indirectly, to promoting mutual understanding for half a century.

As Professor Robin Winks, Yale University historian and former Fulbrighter, has stated, "The Fulbright Program is not some form of aid or cultural imperialism of carrying American expertise to a foreign country (though it does that too), but it is also setting up a large body of people who have acquired not only knowledge about this foreign country to which they go, but far deeper knowledge about our own country, to return here to teach or do research."

The hallmark of the Fulbright Program is its binational nature. In every nation where the program thrives, it is the joint responsibility of the U.S. government and the host-government. The program is administered by the U.S. Information Agency under policy guidelines established by a presidentially appointed 12-member board known as the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Fifty Binational Commissions composed of equal members of U.S. and partner country citizens supervise the program in foreign countries; in countries without a Binational Commission, the program is run by the U.S. Embassy in partnership with the host country government.

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The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program today is a congressional appropriation; in fiscal 1995, 72% of program cost ($118 million) was appropriated; and 28% ($46 million) came from foreign sources, including $22 million from 37 governments, $4 million from private donations, and $20 million in in-kind support. Foreign and American universities also provide indirect support such as tuition awards, salary supplements, housing, and other benefits.

Each year between 4,700 and 5,000 new Fulbright grants are awarded in four distinct programs. Graduate Student Fellowships are offered to American and foreign graduate students and graduating seniors. Approximately 850 Americans receive grants annually for study abroad, while 1,400 awards are offered annually to foreign graduate students to attend American universities.

The Fulbright Scholar Program awards grants to nearly 900 American scholars and professionals to lecture or conduct research in more than 100 countries; another 900 foreign scholars come to American universities for an academic year or term.

The Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program involves about 400 elementary, secondary, and post-secondary teachers annually, mostly on a one-for-one exchange basis.

The Fulbright-Hays Foreign Language and Area Studies Training Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, sponsors nearly 1,000 Americans annually for group seminars and for doctoral dissertation and faculty research abroad in non-Western foreign languages and area studies.

Last year alone, Americans from more than 500 colleges and universities in all 50 states traveled abroad to study, teach, or do research at over 600 institutions in nearly 150 countries. Foreign students and scholars from nearly 700 institutions overseas came to some 300 American colleges and universities in 46 states and the District of Columbia.

As America's flagship educational exchange program, the Fulbright Program now counts among its alumni many of the world's most distinguished leaders in numerous professions. Five recent heads of state came to the United States in their formative years on Fulbright grants. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners are Fulbrighters. More than 60 U.S. university presidents are Fulbright Program alumni.

Fulbrighters in government include: United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali; Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso; former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson; Greece's late Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou; and Harrison H. Schmitt, the astronaut who went to the moon and later served as a U.S. senator from New Mexico.

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Fulbrighters who have been awarded Nobel prizes in the sciences and social sciences include: Physicist Hans Bethe; medical researcher Edwin Neher; and economists Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson.

Fulbright alumni in the arts include: Composer Philip Glass; actor Stacy Keach; orchestra conductor Lorin Maazel; painter Philip Pearlstein; and film director Krtso Papic.

Among Fulbrighters in literature are: Writers Chinua Achebe, Malcolm Bradbury, Joseph Heller, Dominique Lapierre; and poets Maya Angelou and Rita Dove.

Among Fulbrighters who have headed educational institutions are: Akito Arima, Tokyo University; Derek Bok, Harvard University; Hanna Gray, University of Chicago; and Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J., Georgetown University.

Among Fulbrighters in business are: Former member of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Andrew Brimmer; president of Japan's Fuji Bank, Toru Hashimoto; director of the Nobel Institute in Norway, Geir Lundestad; and chairman of Random House, Alberto Vitale.

Among Fulbrighters in the media are: President, Dong-A Ilbo (Daily News), Korea, O-Ki Kwon; managing director, Finnish News Agency, Per-Erik Lonnfors; executive editor of the New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld; and chief foreign correspondent, ABC News, Garrick Utley.

At the heart of the Fulbright Program is the belief that free and responsible individuals can make a difference in the world. According to John P. Loiello, USIA Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs, "the majority of Fulbright alumni, whose names may be less well-known, bring the benefits of their exchange experiences, over the balance of their lifetimes, into their offices, classrooms, and families each day."

This month USIA also marks the third anniversary of the death of Amy Biehl, a dynamic 25-year-old from California, who was killed by an angry mob in South Africa while there on a Fulbright grant.

During 1996, the Fulbright 50th anniversary is being celebrated throughout the United States and the world. President and Mrs. Clinton hosted a dinner at the White House in June honoring the program, while universities are holding a variety of events across the United States during this year. Overseas, the King of Norway, the Australian Prime Minister, and the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan have attended commemorative events in their homelands. Microsoft's Bill Gates will speak at a commemoration in London. Additional programs in honor of the 50th anniversary are scheduled for the remainder of the year in Australia, England, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Uganda, among others, and the United States.

President Clinton, speaking about his friend and mentor J. William Fulbright and the exchange program he conceived 50 years ago, remarked: "When Senator Fulbright proposed his exchange program, the world was divided and shattered by global war. We now live in a world linked economically and by information technology undreamed of then. Yet Senator Fulbright's recognition of the urgent need for the world's people to know each other and each others' cultures is as relevant today as it was then. His legacy, the Fulbright Program, remains a vibrant response to the diverse challenges of our changing world."

(A complete listing of Fulbright anniversary events, along with information on the Fulbright Program, is available on the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at http://exchanges.state.gov/education/fulbright/).

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