HISTORY OF FULBRIGHT
 
THE BEGINNING

September 1945. The war that had swept across the world, leaving few of its inhabitants untouched, had finally come to an end. Leaders of the victorious countries were searching for ways to pick up the pieces - to create, if at all possible, a more peaceful and prosperous future for all nations. A young U.S senator from the state of Arkansas, J.William Fulbright, had an idea.

"The prejudices and misconceptions which exist in every country regarding foreign people," he told a friend, "are the great barrier to any system of government." If, however the peoples of the world could get to know each other better, live together and learn side by side, maybe they would be more inclined to cooperate and less willing to go off and kill each other.

Fulbright had traveled throughout Eastern Europe and had been at Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar, experiences that had broadened his horizons and made him a citizen of the world. From his time in England, he knew the value of educational exchanges firsthand. Why not create a program that would take in the whole world, with students from as many countries as possible studying - and living and getting to know the people - in Europe, Asia, Africa, the rest of the Western Hemisphere, and the Pacific?

A measure that Fulbright introduced to the US Congress that autumn, "for the promotion of international goodwill through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture, and science," was passed by the Congress and signed on August 1, 1946, by President Harry S. Truman.

The program that historian Arnold Toynbee would call "one of the really generous and imaginative things that have been done in the world since World War II" and the most fabulously profitable investment ever authorized by Congress" was about to begin. 
 
AFTER WORLD WAR II

After World War II ended, millions of pieces of surplus property were left in warehouses and supply depots all over the world. These materials 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. The situation prompted Senator Fulbright to introduce an ingenious way to fund his exchange program. 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 35 students and one professor traveled to the United States and 65 Americans went overseas. Today, nearly a quarter of a million people from 150 nations and every imaginable discipline have benefited from a "Fulbright experience". These individuals have contributed in ways both small and great, directly and indirectly, to a lessening of the political tensions of the post World War II era. Their achievements are testimony to the importance of the dissemination of knowledge and the exchange of ideas in the resolution of human problems.

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-country government. In each nation, it is administered through a shared voice. Today's Fulbright scholars, students, and teachers are - as they were 50 years ago - selected on the basis of academic merit and excellence reflecting the mutual interests of the partner nations.

J. William Fulbright died in February 1995. On hearing of Senator Fulbright's death, President Bill Clinton stated, "I am just profoundly grateful today for the conviction that he imparted to me when I was a young man, that we could make peace with the world if we seek better understanding, if we promote the exchanges among people, if we advance the cause of global education."
 
THE FUTURE
 
The Fulbright Program was born of war in the hope that fostering exchange between the people of the United States and those of other nations would nurture an understanding and tolerance that would remove the grounds for future conflict. It was a bold and visionary experiment and, for over 50 years, it has been an unequivocally successful one.

The world has changed much in the past 50 years, grown smaller as jet propulsion, satellites and computer links have made travel far easier and communication almost instantaneous. Still, immersion in the culture of a foreign country - living in one of its towns or cities, walking down its streets, shopping in its markets, talking over a cup of coffee with someone who grew up there - cannot be replaced by a computer screen. Exchange of information from one side of the world to the other can take place in the blink of an eye through fiber-optic wires, the exchange of real understanding about the forces of our own time - political, social, economical, cultural - still requires time and the physical presence of two people with inquisitive minds and open hearts, the active and committed engagement of human actors for whom ideas, not merely data, are what ultimately matters.

At the heart of the Fulbright Program is the belief that free and responsible individuals can make a difference in the world, and that it is the proper business of governments of free men and women to promote and encourage such possibilities. It is individuals who must decipher and map the world, interpreting its significance with others through inquiry and reflection. Fulbright scholars, individual by individual, person to person, must therefore be counted among the essential players in the continuing attempt of the people of all nations to understand one another.

Whether we are public policy-makers or private citizens, our understanding of the world beyond our own borders - and the world's understanding of us - is critical to securing democracy and economic prosperity for all peoples.

In 1965, Senator J William Fulbright said the aim of the program that bears his name was "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."

This is still its aim today.