Fifty Years of the Fulbright Phenomenon

Editor's note: This article was originally published in the Summer 1996 issue of International Educator. In celebration of NAFSA's 75th anniversary, IE is taking a look back at the topics and moments that have defined the field since the magazine began publication 33 years ago.

In 1946, the world was such a different place. The Fulbright Program, called a modest program with an immodest aim, was developed in response to the destruction and the depression of World War II. It was designed to prevent an all-out nuclear catastrophe. Having transformed himself through the Rhodes Scholarship, J. William Fulbright was convinced that if future leaders were exposed to different cultures for significant periods of time, their minds would expand to include tolerance of different attitudes, an understanding of social structures at variance with our own, and an empathy for alien cultures. During international disagreements, these leaders would, he felt certain, exchange ideas instead of bullets.

In other words, this immodest aim of his was peace, defined with his characteristic hard-headed realism. Peace is not a negative, static concept. It is not a tranquil state of felicity and blessedness. It is a positive method of adjusting the endless conflicts inherent in the nature of restless and energetic men.

The Fulbright Program, called a modest program with an immodest aim, was developed in response to the destruction and the depression of World War II.

It was a recognition of these endless conflicts which shaped Senator Fulbright's requirements for the organization of the program. The first focused on its participants. He knew that the program would only succeeding if there was a sense of equality and shared responsibility among everyone involved. Therefore, in more than fifty countries, binational commissions composed of equal numbers of host-country and U.S. citizens determine the program and its participants. Much of the loyalty to the Fulbright Program comes from this fact; that it is not Big Brother looking down and making all the decisions. There is ownership, and this carries with it a special pride.

Senator Fulbright also emphasized that his scholarship was openly and blatantly designed for an elite of intelligent, energetic, and civic-­minded men and women, irrespective of their economic circumstances. He wanted the most perceptive and creative potential leaders in all disciplines and in all walks of life to experience the development and expansion of mind that one cannot avoid when immersed in a culture other than one's own.

These are the timeless truths of the Fulbright Program. Its mission of peace, its commitment to shared responsibilities, intellectual excellence, and expansion of outlook. There is no doubt in my mind that they will be as important during the next fifty years as they have been since the beginning. One brief glance at the more than three dozen destructive battles flaring on every continent should convince us that we must redouble our efforts to reach out and study other ways of being; to teach our young to respect sound values which are nonetheless at variance with ours. This program has been and will continue to be essential to provide a positive atmosphere in which all thoughtful voices are heard and respected, so that real consensus can be achieved around the planet.

Over the last half-century, the Fulbright Program has been successful beyond the wildest hopes and dreams of its founder. Almost 230,000 scholars from more than 140 different countries have studied abroad and returned home, forever changed. They hold positions of prominence in business, politics, journalism, science, and technology. They are leaders in every field, in fact, from academia to the arts.

These are the timeless truths of the Fulbright Program. Its mission of peace, its commitment to shared responsibilities, intellectual excellence, and expansion of outlook.

On this solid foundation, there have been and will continue to be never-ending adjustments to keep up with the paradigm shifts in progress all around us. That is the nature of great ideas. Taking the U.S. Constitution as an example, a basic structure can remain strong while its parts change with the changing times. Issues are reinterpreted in the light of new technology, a newly discovered body of knowledge, a change in attitudes, or social realities. For example, as far as the Fulbright Program is concerned, more and more countries now share the cost of the program, making it one of the most economical efforts ever undertaken by the U.S. government. In fact, fifty years of the Fulbright Program have cost the U.S. taxpayer less than three days of the Defense Department at today's spending levels.

How has the Fulbright Program influenced individual students and scholars, and what are the wider implications of this influence? I have been told many times of the significant influence of the program on the leadership in developing countries. The prime minister of Poland has said that he is convinced that without his year as a Fulbright student he would certainly not be in his present position. Stories of Fulbright participants and foreign government officials and educators in so many different countries are heart­warming, as I discovered in my travels over the last six months in eight different countries and throughout the United States.

There was, for instance, the elderly Japanese businessman who told me that he came fearfully to Texas only seven years after World War II, convinced that he would be isolated and ostracized but determined to improve his lot through education in the United States. What he found was a warm and welcoming community where he developed friendships which continue to this day. He also returned to Japan with the revolutionary concept of total quality management, which made his business stiff competition for the United States.

In fact, fifty years of the Fulbright Program have cost the U.S. taxpayer less than three days of the Defense Department at today's spending levels.

In Norway I met an American senior scholar whose lectures seem to be making an impact on the students in his classes, an impact that will probably extend beyond the term of his grant. When he arrived, he was told that professors wrote out their lectures and delivered the written word, which was used then as the basis of the exam at the end of the year. That meant that if students could find copies of the lectures, they would not even have to go to class. Not happy with that procedure, our Fulbright scholar began to devote a considerable proportion of each class to discussion, despite a warning from his Norwegian colleagues that the students would not tolerate such a change. Instead of the anticipated boycott, attendance at his classes rose markedly, and the dull, glazed-over eyes he stared at in the beginning were now filled with sparks of interest. He described those classes to me as the university's rector listened intently. We will see what happens.

Norway now gives a Fulbright grant to a roving scholar. This year's, trained in philosophy and history, is visiting schools throughout the country, teaching occasional classes, answering myriad questions in discussion periods as well as lunchrooms, hallways, and playing fields. In the school I visited while there, the teachers, as well as the students, were obviously delighted by his visit and wanted him back for another. I had the impression that he was offering a picture of this country that no television program could provide, and he was stimulating an interest in reading about subjects far beyond traditional lists.

And while I was in Greece last year, the Northern Greek Fulbright Alumni Association in Thessalonika discussed the possibility of a conference bringing together Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Albanians. Now, quite aside from the horrendous situation in the former Yugoslavia, there is so much misunderstanding among the citizens of the region that the idea seemed to have great merit to me; and once again, I felt very proud of my association with Fulbright.

Physicist and astronaut Joe Allen, a Fulbright student in Germany, gives us a good description of another aspect of the Fulbright Program's influence, namely, on one's attitude about home, which can be equally important. "Through my Fulbright year abroad," he says, "I was exposed for the first time to a world much larger and certainly more foreign and, frankly, much more exciting than anything I had ever experienced until that time. Now, thanks to the Fulbright opportunity, I began to appreciate the full dimensions of our world. More importantly, I began, for the first time, to truly know and appreciate the home from which I had traveled. Some 22 years later, I experienced many of the same feelings when I had the great privilege of leaving Planet Earth entirely and traveling into orbit around the Earth. A Fulbright experience is very similar to a space flight. Both expand and change dramatically one's view of the world."

The astronaut writes dramatically about one of the most valuable aspects of the Fulbright Program, namely, the clearer view of one's own home and its effect on subsequent behavior. Gained from a distance, this overview allows a Fulbrighter to see and appreciate the wider world while functioning more effectively within a local community. Fulbright scholars are exposed to a different culture in a way no movie or book can match. They absorb alien attitudes and customs so that these lose their frightening aspects. They return home to become an active part of a community armed with a view from outside, which makes it possible—in some cases, necessary—to push upward and beyond as citizens of the world while remaining rooted in family and local institutions.

"A Fulbright experience is very similar to a space flight. Both expand and change dramatically one's view of the world."—Joe Allen

Despite the obvious benefits of an education abroad, there is much fear in the international education and exchange community, and rightfully so, about the growing isolationist spirit in the United States. While I fully agree that we must all work hard to strengthen programs such as Fulbright, I have a real feeling of optimism. Fifty years ago, when the international program was first brought into Congress, a senator stopped my husband in the hall and stated, "Young man, if I'd known what you were doing, I'd have shut it down, because it is very dangerous to expose our fine young men and women to these foreign 'isms."'

Fifty years ago, when international exchange was, indeed, voluntary and dependent upon parental purse-strings, it involved little more than Europe, with an occasional student coming from a country within this hemisphere and very little interaction with the rest of the world. The amount of ignorance and prejudice arising from this situation was downright dangerous. Whenever I get discouraged, I force myself to remember that 40 years ago, as a WASP woman with one of the best educations this country had to offer, I was not allowed to take the Foreign Service exam. Instead, I was encouraged to go to secretarial school if I really wanted to work.

Thirty years ago in a hostile political climate the Fulbright Program was cut, not by the 20 percent we are hearing today, but by 70 percent, which is something we don't remember these days. Fifteen years ago the Reagan administration proposed a 50 percent cut with the intention of phasing out the program altogether. Both times, through the power of the Fulbright idea and the work of the program's alumni and its supporters around the world, opposition was overcome.

Fifty years ago, when international exchange was, indeed, voluntary and dependent upon parental purse-strings, it involved little more than Europe, with an occasional student coming from a country within this hemisphere and very little interaction with the rest of the world.

How would my husband have felt about the present funding crisis, and what would he have advised us to do? In 1980 he was among the first and most vocal critics of the administration's proposals, enlisting people from around the world to help in the campaign. People all over the world not only did their own letter-writing, persuading, and arm-twisting, but found friends and other Fulbrighters and supporters to do so. People do not realize how important and how influential letters are, not the flood of postcards that an NRA campaign can produce, but thoughtful letters, the kind that Fulbright alumni and supporters usually write. Even six of them in a representative's office can really make the office sit up and listen.

Now we may have a long way to go, but we have come so far; and a growing number of us know the importance of an international outlook, of exchange programs across national borders, of worldwide collaborative efforts. All in all, transformations in political and social structures all over the planet, aided and abetted by whirlwind changes in science and technology, will require a flexible Fulbright Program to meet the challenges, challenges that require the full participation of every single one of us. International education is a shared responsibility, which will thrive only through a lifetime commitment to its principles.  •

Harriet Mayor Fulbright delivered this address at the 48th annual national conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators in Phoenix in June, where she was presented with NAFSA's "Fulbright Honor Roll," a scroll bearing the names of 450 NAFSA members who have held Fulbright grants.