The State Department, which administers the Fulbright program. Eleven members of the Fulbright Board of Directors of 12 people resigned for an alleged interference from the Trump administration.
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tilting legend
Alastair Pike / AFP via Getty Images
All members except one of the board of directors of 12 people who oversee the prestigious Fulbright program have resigned, citing political interference by the Trump administration.
The Congress created the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board Through the 1961 Fulbright – Hays of 1961 law to supervise the US government flagship program international educational and cultural exchanges. The program grants some 8,000 Merit -based subsidies Each year, allowing Fulbright researchers in the fields of studying, teaching and conducting research in some 160 countries.
The members of the Board of Directors, which the president in office appoints at three years, meet quarterly to establish the policies and procedures governing the non -partisan Fulbright program. They are also responsible for the selection of scholarship participants, as the former members of the board of directors wrote in a letter of resignation Published in Subpord Wednesday.
“At the creation of the program, the Congress clearly specified that the Fulbright Board of Directors has the final approval authority for candidates, which occurs after an exhaustive and deliberate process, led by one year by a non -partisan career staff of the Department of State and the embassies of the whole world”, indicates the letter, of a story called “formerly the Fulbright Foreign Bourship Board”.
But former members of the board of directors say that the Trump administration has interfered in this process, undermining its integrity and usurping the authority of the board of directors.
What are former members of the board of directors lightening?
The letter of resignation indicates that the administration rejected the Fulbright awards to a “substantial number” of people he had selected for the academic year 2025-2026, while subjecting 1,200 other Fulbright beneficiaries foreign to “an unauthorized examination process and could reject more”.
The prices have been replaced in subjects covering architecture, biology, engineering, agriculture, animal sciences, medical sciences, music and history, he says, accusing the administration of “the injection of politics and ideological mandates in the Fulbright program”.
“We believe that these actions do not only contradict status, but are contrary to the Fulbright mission and values, including freedom of expression and academic freedom, which Congress specified in the status,” they said.
The letter indicates that the Council raised legal problems and its strong objections with senior administration officials on several occasions, including in writing, but that those responsible “have refused to recognize or respond”.
In a statement shared with NPR, the State Department – which sponsors the program – described the members of the board of directors as “partner policy” of former President Joe Biden and declared that their assertion that the law of 1961 “offers an exclusive and final speech” on Fulbright’s requests to the Board of Directors is false.
“It is ridiculous to believe that these members would continue to have a final speech on the process of demand, in particular when it comes to determining the academic relevance and alignment with the decrees of President Trump,” he said in a statement, calling their resignations as “political stuntman trying to undermine President Trump”.
However, the State Department own political memory quotes the act as giving the board of directors “the final responsibility for the choice of all the participants in educational exchange programs”.
Former members declared that they had voted to resign on Wednesday, with immediate effect “rather than approving unprecedented actions” which, according to them, violated the law, compromised American national interests and undermine the mission and the mandates of the Fulbright program.
“Our resignation is not a decision that we take lightly,” they wrote. “But continuing to serve after the administration has constantly ignored the request of the Board of Directors to follow the law risks legitimizing the actions that we think we are illegal and damage the integrity of this light program and the credibility of America abroad.”
The White House spokesman Anna Kelly said on Thursday that “President Trump, not Fulbright Board, had been elected by the American people to ensure that all foreign policy initiatives align with our national interests”.
Members defend their decisions
Thursday morning, there is only one active member listed on the Board of Directors website: Carmen Estrada-Schaye, who was appointed in 2022. She declared at NPR by e-mail: “I intend to keep this commitment.”
“Fulbright is a precious asset for peace and understanding of the world,” wrote Estrada-Schaye. “Many winners of the Nobel Prize Possible Prize and World leaders were Fulbright scholars at the start of their career.”
James Costos, one of the members who resigned, wrote in a Linkedin Post that he had done it “not to protest, but in defense of the principle”.
He thought about the meeting with the mayor of Harriet Fulbright – the widow of Senator J. William Fulbright, the program of the program – during a prize ceremony in 2014.
“She said that her husband had created the Fulbright program, among others, to help prevent a third world war,” Costos wrote. “He thought that if people around the world could come to the United States to study, live, learn alongside the Americans, they would train human ties more deeply than politics or politics.”
Costos said he had moved away from the board of directors “to honor this heritage, because I believe in it too deep to stand next because he is compromised”.
What happens next?
The resignation of mass leaves the remaining seats of the empty board of directors. The White House did not answer the NPR question on Trump’s plans to fill them.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the classification democrat of the senatorial committee of foreign relations, told NPR in a statement that the congress wanted the board of directors to be a control of the executive and “ensured that students, researchers and educators are not subject to the flagrant political favoritism for which this administration is known.”
She expressed her concern about what could happen without this check.
“Although I understand and respect the Bipartite Fulbright Board of Directors for having resigned en masse rather than granting credibility to a politicized process, I am painfully aware that today’s decision will change the quality of Fulbright programming and the independent research that has made our country a leader in many areas,” said Shaheen.
Requests for the Fulbright 2026-2027 program opened in April, with a deadline early October.