Fulbright

With my wife just finished with her Fulbright, I am glad that she got through this without a problem, but the decline of this wonderful program is just one more way that Trump and “friends” shit on anything decent about this nation.

The dozen board members of the prestigious Fulbright program that promotes international educational exchanges resigned on Wednesday because of what they said was political interference by the Trump administration in their operations, according to people familiar with the issues and a board memo obtained by The New York Times.

The members are concerned that political appointees at the State Department, which manages the program, are acting illegally by canceling the awarding of Fulbright scholarships to almost 200 American professors and researchers who are prepared to go to universities and other research institutions overseas starting this summer, said the people, including Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire.

The board approved those scholars over the winter after a yearlong selection process, and the State Department was supposed to send acceptance letters by April, the people said. But instead, the board learned that the office of public diplomacy at the agency had begun sending rejection letters to the scholars based mainly on their research topics, they said.

In addition, the department is reviewing the applications of about 1,200 scholars from other countries who have already been approved by the board to come to the United States, the people said. Those foreign scholars were also supposed to receive acceptance letters around April.

The memo written by the board says that members are resigning “rather than endorse unprecedented actions that we believe are impermissible under the law, compromise U.S. national interests and integrity, and undermine the mission and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.

The board posted the memo online on Wednesday morning, after sending a resignation letter to the White House.

The board is also concerned that the budget that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is requesting from Congress for the next fiscal year cuts spending for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which includes the Fulbright program, to $50 million from $691 million this fiscal year.

I met a lot of the younger Fulbright scholars working in Mexico, graduate students mostly. They are all working on gender and race and sexuality and migration. I can’t see any of these subjects being funded anymore. This does nothing but make America stupider. Which I guess is the point.