Last week, 11 of the 12 members of the Fulbright Board of Directors resigned, citing political interference in awarding Fulbright Scholar awards for the upcoming year. This comes less than two weeks after ten students and six researchers left Sweden after nine months away from home, returning to America to continue their educational and professional paths.
Unless something changes, this year’s Fulbright research grantees to Sweden, and those to other countries around the world, may be the last to make the trip, as the entire international cultural exchange program budget faces elimination in the budget bill.
Since it was founded in 1946, the Fulbright Program has enjoyed bipartisan support because it has always been aligned first and foremost with our national interests. In the words of Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), the American politician and statesman who served in the U.S. Senate between 1945 and 1974, Fulbright was designed to be “a modest program with an immodest aim — the achievement in international affairs of a regime more civilized, rational and humane than the empty systems of power of the past,” as he said when the program was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman.
In order to continue this work, Fulbright’s successors today must act to restore this important program that has been paying huge dividends for nearly 80 years.
The Fulbright scholars in Sweden, including myself, hail from institutions across the country. After a rigorous selection process over the course of a year, they were chosen to represent our country abroad, facing long winter days, to study critical issues such as immunities in malaria infections, potential treatments for chronic kidney disease, root causes of autoimmune disorders, fair uses of artificial intelligence, strengthened safety regulations in long-range rescue operations, long-term sustainability of oceanic food sources, and enhanced access to medical services.
The Fulbright Program runs on a tight annual budget of $288 million, representing a minuscule share of America’s international relations budget. Scholars and students are deployed to 165 countries around the world. Stipends to grantees are exceedingly modest, covering only room, board and incidental expenses. Limited financial support encourages grantees to explore local resources and even share accommodations.
To survive the Nordic winter when the sun appeared only two or three hours each day, the 15 researchers in Sweden spent their free time participating in local sports teams and volunteering at health clinics and community service organizations. Their presence in community activities helped forge lifelong relationships and spread goodwill at a time when America’s hard power is frequently questioned abroad.
Since the program’s inception, Fulbright recipients have gone on to win 62 Nobel prizes, 96 Pulitzer prizes and 17 Presidential Medals of Freedom. Eighty-two have been named MacArthur geniuses and 44 have become heads of state. The list of Fulbrighters is long, distinguished and bipartisan. Fulbrighter Linus Pauling, one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, won both the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize. Authors John Steinbeck, Edward Albee and John Updike were Fulbrighters, as is American soprano Renée Fleming.
In the eyes of Fulbright, who himself received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993, the Fulbright Program was meant to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason and a little more compassion into world affairs, thereby increasing the chance that nations will learn to live in peace and friendship. The 2025 Swedish Fulbright researchers, representing the best and brightest our country has to offer, have done their part to contribute to this goal.
I wish our senators could have seen them in action as I have. At a time when governmental funding priorities are scrutinized for fiscal efficiency, the Fulbright Program stands as a proven investment in education and diplomacy while promoting American values worldwide and shaping future leaders.
Fulbright helps build a stronger, smarter, more prosperous United States. Eliminating its funding would be a poor investment in America’s future, making the world a more dangerous place in the process.
Christie S. Warren, the 2024-2025 Fulbright-Lund Distinguished Chair in Public International Law, is Professor of the Practice of International and Comparative Law and director of the Center for Comparative Legal Studies at William and Mary Law School.