The Fulbright Program: Chock Full of Bright Ideas
17 comments
·August 3, 2025yapyap
Beautiful blogpost and I wholly agree with the message of not scrapping everything going on today because you can’t see immediate growth from it.
It’s like if the USA was a house, Donald Trump and his goons are cancelling all the utilities without realising (1) that in a month the water will be shut off and the entire house will start smelling like shit.
1. or probably without caring, it’s easy to misattribute malice for stupidity when the actions being taken are THIS malicious but that’s what’s going on. I don’t necessarily think Donald Trump is this stupid but I think he is just very very malicious. Though at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter whether he is stupid or malicious or both, the consequences of what he is doing won’t change depending on intentions.
dhosek
The level of trashing federal government programs that’s taken place in the last 7 months is just mind-boggling. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see the damage undone.
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Spooky23
There’s a dozen people with their fingers in the policy pie. End of the day, the people calling the shots don’t believe in America as it was, and are creating a new era with their application of federal power.
The end of the post-WW2 American era has arrived, and looking at the state of the opposition, it’s not coming back. The courts have essentially executed a constitutional change which will have far reaching impact.
The smart move now is to figure out what that means to you and your family. Trump is a narcissist with obvious limitations. The true threat is a more organized sociopath, backed by the rulings of a young, craven federal judiciary, and what monstrous stuff is truly possible.
Everything Nixon did is legal now, and no doubt worse stuff is happening.
jalk
Surprised that Fulbright scholarships are still a thing, given DOGE. Cultural exchange programs seems like something the current US administration would get a severe rash from.
thomassmith65
“The Fulbright Program's mission is to bring a little
more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more
compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the
chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace
and friendship.” — Senator J. William Fulbright
CobrastanJorji
It was really close. Check out https://fulbright.org/status
Trump's draft 2026 budget in May would have cut its funding by 93%. In June, the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the whole board, resigned in protest, because the Trump administration was meddling and trying to remove funding for certain foreigners and to add new inspections for scholars who were wrong in some unspecified way. Fortunately, the funding got back into the draft bill in mid-July.
ModernMech
Like all US institutions that support higher education and diversity, the Trump administration is attacking it:
Fulbright Board Resigns After Accusing Trump Aides of Political Interference: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/fulbright-boa...
Education Dept. Cancels Fulbright-Hays Applications, at Least for Now: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/study-abroad/2025...
Association of International Educators warns students won’t want to come to the US https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/association-international-ed...
esafak
Exactly. If you like it, don't draw attention to it.
trallnag
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allears
The USA profits from this (in dollars and cents) for a number of reasons. For one thing, our industries need smart people to build competitive products. For another thing, being a center of science attracts investments to the US, and also generates revenue from visiting students and scientists. Not to mention the kinds of benefits that may not have immediate cash payoff, but better position the US to be a world leader.
We seem to have given all that up now, for reasons that aren't very clear to me.
corimaith
I don't think America has been innovating much since 2015. And the Chinese are managing fine or even better without these.
There's an argument though that the sheer prevalence of these talent programs institutes a sort of "institutional capture" over innovation. It works for those who are recognized it, but these also soon become requirements to more prestigious facilities. Which leaves those whose interests are not so recognized with increasesd barriers to realizing their visions.
The pure exam systems are somewhat more holistic in that manner, after that single barrier there is a greater degree of freedom in heterogeneity.
trallnag
So, it's about soft power, something I got disillusioned by in the wake of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Or maybe China, India, etc. are just better at it.
WasimBhai
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Met my current best friend 15 years ago at Georgia Tech. He was a Fulbright scholar from Turkey studying architecture. Really glad this program existed!