The Fulbright Program has long emphasized that its mission is about diplomacy as much as scholarship. In recent years the United States’ best-known academic-exchange program has focused on the Muslim world, renewing or strengthening ties with what program officials call “critical” countries and establishing a new short-term visiting-scholar program for professors from predominantly Muslim countries.
“We have put more resources toward building mutual understanding” in politically significant regions, says Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees the government-sponsored program.
This fall about 2,600 foreign students will come to the United States from more than 130 countries as part of the Fulbright Program. At the same time 1,200 American students will travel abroad to take classes, conduct research, or teach English. Participation in the Fulbright Program — which gives grants to American and foreign scholars, as well as students — has increased steadily since it was established in 1946. The grants are awarded by binational Fulbright commissions, financed by the U.S. government and the government of each country where the awards are available.
As part of its effort to strengthen ties with predominantly Muslim countries, the State Department reopened Fulbright exchanges with Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003. (They were suspended in 1979 and 1989, respectively.) This year 25 Afghan students and 42 Iraqi students will come to the United States. American students, however, still cannot receive Fulbright grants for either country.
The Fulbright Program is also developing exchanges with Libya, while increasing the number of grants available in Turkey and Pakistan. With $75-million in extra financing from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Fulbright Commission in Pakistan was able to send 108 students, the second most of any country, to American institutions this year. In each of the past five years Pakistan gave grants to no more than 11 students.
The Fulbright Program has also supported outreach to high-school and undergraduate students throughout the Muslim world in order to promote a pool of grant applicants that represents more than a country’s elites.
Among the group of foreign Fulbright students in the United States this year are 202 foreign-language teaching assistants. Three years ago the teaching assistants, who also take classes at their host institutions, numbered 30. Most of the program’s growth has come from adding Arabic, Pashto, Turkish, Urdu, and other Asian and African languages, says Mr. Farrell.
“There’s no better way to convey mutual understanding than through the ability to converse in other languages,” he says, adding that many Fulbright grantees teach at institutions where their languages would not be offered otherwise.
Other new Fulbright programs, such as Direct Access to the Muslim World, also attempt to reach a broad group of Americans. Under the Direct Access program, colleges can apply to play host to a visiting scholar for three to six weeks. “We want to focus on smaller institutions in parts of the country where this will make a difference,” says Mr. Farrell. Fifty Direct Access scholars will come to the United States this year.
Following are three profiles of this year’s Fulbright grantees, along with a list of institutions with the largest number of Fulbright winners from their campuses.
|
|