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A Bill to amend the Surplus Property Act of 1944…

and The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961

An Analysis of Four Historical Perspectives

David Comp
International Higher Education Consulting
http://ihec-djc.blogspot.com/
The Fulbright Program 2

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to introduce a bill for reference to the
Committee on Military Affairs, authorizing the use of credits established abroad for the
promotion of international good will through the Exchange of students in fields of
education, culture, and science

J. William Fulbright, freshman Senator from Arkansas


One afternoon in late September, 1945 during a routine session of the U.S. Senate

A Bill to amend the Surplus Property Act of 1944 to designate the Department of State
as the disposal agency for surplus property outside the United States, its Territories
and possessions, and for other purposes

The Fulbright Act of 1946

Quote and description from


Walter Johnson and Francis J. Colligan
The Fulbright Program: A History (1967)

A Bill to amend the Surplus Property Act of 1944… and the

The Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961


The Fulbright Program 3

In 1945, as a direct response to the tragedy of World War II, Senator J. William

Fulbright introduced legislation sponsoring exchange programs for students and faculty

between the United States and foreign countries that was eventually signed into law by

President Harry S. Truman on August 1, 1946. Fulbright (1976) stated that “it is…fair to

say that the Exchange Program is an instrument of foreign policy, not just for the Untied

States, for all participating nations – as well as a memorable educational experience for

the individual participants” (p. 2). The Fulbright Act set in motion a great history of

international exchange between the United States and the rest of the world. The

educational exchange and foreign language components from additional legislation such

as The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (also known as The

Smith-Mundt Act), amendments to The Mutual Security Act in 1952, and The National

Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 were consolidated into The Mutual Educational

and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (better known as The Fulbright-Hays Act). The

Fulbright-Hays Act remains law today and represents the world’s flagship international

educational exchange policy and program.

My paper will analyze the historical interpretations and narratives of five

publications that discuss the Fulbright Program and its legacy. I’m particularly interested

in how the various authors discuss and organize the early history of the program.

Specifically, the years just prior to the signing of the Fulbright Act of 1946 through the

few years following the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961. My analysis will consider The

Fulbright Act and The Fulbright-Hays Act to be two separate and very distinct laws but

will also treat these laws as identical since the The Fulbright Act of 1946 was absorbed

into The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961. Throughout this paper I will use the term
The Fulbright Program 4

“Fulbright program” to refer to the overall philosophy/scope of these two Acts but will

also refer to these Acts by their particular titles as necessary. Additional publications

were read to provide a more in depth understanding of the Fulbright program and its

history through the end of the twentieth century.

Forty years: The Fulbright program 1946-1986, Twenty-third annual report of the

Board of Foreign Scholarships

This publication is the official 1986 report of the Board of Foreign Scholarships

(today known as J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board) which focused on the

first forty years of the program. This report is only forty seven pages long with seventeen

of these pages devoted to specific fellowship data (quantitative) for the 1985 to 1986

academic year as well as historical data from 1949 to 1986. The Board of Foreign

Scholarships does an excellent job of providing specific information in a small amount of

space. This publication is divided into various sections starting with a letter from the

Board of Foreign Scholarships Chairman, followed by “The Laws Behind the Program,”

“The Binational Approach,” “The Focus on Academic Merit,” “ Achievements of the

Program,” “ The Fulbright Program Today,” “Fortieth Anniversary Activities,” and

“Other Major Activities.” This is the perfect publication for someone new to the

Fulbright program who wants to gain a thorough understanding of its history, current

organizational and funding structures, recent accomplishments and future goals, all

supported by current and historical data. It’s filled with specific information to inform

the reader and formatted in a manner to include multiple glossy photos, tables and charts.

This is a typical annual report for the Foreign Scholarship Board except that this

report celebrates the first forty years of the program and provides more details on the
The Fulbright Program 5

early history of the program than the average report. Included therein is valuable, albeit

brief, information on the early problems of setting up the program. While the underlying

philosophy of the Fulbright program is mutual understanding of and appreciation for

cultural differences, the main purpose is academic exchange. This annual report does a

very good job of describing both the academic focus and cultural

understanding/appreciation of the Fulbright program in the “Focus on Academic Merit”

section. This section also provides insight into the early discussions and planning on the

selection process of Fulbright fellows. It describes how during the selection process that

weight is not to be given with respect to financial need (it should be a secondary

consideration), the educational level of the application, or to the geographical distribution

of applicants (Fulbright Scholarship Board, 1986). Finally, this report provides a

comprehensive listing of all the members of the Board of Foreign Scholarships from

1946 to 1986. This report does not consult any outside sources and supplies its own data

on the number and destinations of Fulbright fellowships. Any scholar researching the

Fulbright program should consult the annual reports of the Board of Foreign Scholarships

(know today as The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board). These official

reports provide specific information about the history of the program, its current state of

affairs and goals for the future. In addition, they provide current competition cycle and

historical data.

The Fulbright program: A history

This book was first published in 1965 by Walter Johnson and Francis J. Colligan

by the University of Chicago Press. Dr. Walter Johnson was chairman of the Department

of History at the University of Chicago and served on the Board of Foreign Scholarships
The Fulbright Program 6

from 1947 to 1954 and as chairman of the Board of Foreign Scholarships from 1950 to

1953. Dr. Francis J. Colligan served as the executive secretary of the Board of Foreign

Scholarships from 1948 to 1957. Given Johnson and Colligan’s involvement and

leadership roles on the Board of Foreign Scholarships during its initial years of existence

it is not surprising that J. William Fulbright himself wrote the foreward to this book. This

book provides an in depth historical analysis of the first twenty years of the Fulbright

program. The book is sub-divided into four distinct parts titled “Launching the

Program,” “The Program Around the World,” “The American People and the Program,”

and “The Significance of the Program.” In addition, there are four appendices that are

worthy of review. The first two appendices provide the text of The Fulbright Act of 1946

and The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961, respectively. The third appendix provides

fellowship data from the current fellowship cycle of the Fulbright-Hays Program (1963 to

1964) and historical data through 1962. This appendix on fellowship data is important to

include in a book on the history of the Fulbright program but I feel the authors could have

presented much more data and in a better format. The final appendix provides a listing of

all the members, executive secretaries and chief of operations staff from of the Board of

Foreign Scholarships from 1946 to 1965.

Johnson and Colligan provide the most thorough history of the Fulbright program

than any of the other publications read for this analysis. Johnson and Colligan begin

presenting the history of the Fulbright program by describing the state of international

educational exchange as far back the 1890’s through the early decades of the twentieth

century. The history of the Fulbright program can easily be told by starting with the end

of World War II and the signing of The Fulbright Act of 1946. Johnson and Colligan,
The Fulbright Program 7

however, enhance one’s understanding of the Fulbright program by providing details

about the previous fifty years of international educational exchange in the United States

as well as on other national and international events that laid the foundation for Senator J.

William Fulbright to introduce his bill in September 1945 which paved the way for

creation of the Fulbright program. This type of historical analysis would be expected

from Johnson who was a historian by training. Johnson and Colligan consult a

significant number of both primary and secondary sources to supplement their personal

knowledge of the Fulbright program and to inform their research. A review of the

footnotes and “Bibliographical Comment” section of the book provides the reader with a

better understanding of the accuracy of Johnson and Colligan’s writings. They were

informed authors.

The culture of freedom: The small world of Fulbright scholars

This book was written by Leonard R. Sussman in 1992. Sussman held numerous,

high-level, educational and policy positions such as serving on the U.S. delegations to

UNESCO, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a member the

Congressional Panel on Competition and Cooperation in Outer Space, Press Secretary to

the Governor of Puerto Rico, Executive Director and senior scholar of Freedom House

and adjunct professor in Journalism and Mass Communication at New York University.

At just under two hundred pages this book is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to

learn about the history and other details of the Fulbright program. Sussman does a very

good job of describing the history of the program. As we saw earlier with Johnson and

Colligan, Sussman begins describing the history of the Fulbright as having its roots early

in the twentieth century rather than at the end of World War II. Sussman, however, is not
The Fulbright Program 8

as descriptive about international educational exchange in the early 1900’s as Johnson

and Colligan but does begin to tie things together starting with 1925 which was the year

J. William Fulbright went to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Nonetheless,

Sussman’s book provides an excellent account of how the Fulbright program was first

established and then developed during its earliest years until The Fulbright-Hays Act of

1961 and on through the late 1980’s and very early 1990’s.

Sussman organized his book into thirteen chapters. I will not list all of the

chapters in this paper but some of the more important chapters include: “Toward a

National Cultural Policy,” “A History of the Fulbright Program,” “How Do You Get a

Fulbright Grant?,” “Fulbright on Fulbright,” “Is the Program Effective?,” and four

chapters on “Country Models…” for Japan, Indonesia, India and Italy. Sussman also has

the following three appendices: “Interviewees for the Study,” “1991 White Paper, J.

William Fulbright Scholarship Board,” and “Fulbright Grants Awarded, 1949-1990.”

The list of interviewees is quite impressive including an entire chapter devoted to an

interview with J. William Fulbright himself. The data on Fulbright fellowships awarded

which are presented in the third appendix are rather weak and it’s debatable if these

figures should be included as a two page appendix. Sussman could have obtained more

complete data and incorporated them into this otherwise comprehensive book.

Particularly interesting to me is Sussman’s description of the CAMPUS (Central

American Program of Undergraduate Scholarships) pilot program and recommendations

that this highly successful program continue. The Campus program was created in

response to the insurgencies in Central America during the 1980’s and brought

undergraduate students to the United States (Sussman, 1992). My undergraduate


The Fulbright Program 9

institution, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, participated in the CAMPUS

program hosting several undergraduate scholars from Central America, many of whom I

personally knew. Sussman highlights some of the assessment findings by Development

Associates, Inc., who was under contract by the United States Information Agency

(USIA), who identified that returned CAMPUS participants from El Salvador created an

exchange program with the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

The history of Title VI and Fulbright-Hays

This short piece by Richard D. Scarfo, Director of International Education and

Graduate Programs at the United States Department of Education, is from the

proceedings of the 1997 “International Education in the New Global Era” national policy

conference on The Higher Education Act, Title VI, and Fulbright-Hays Programs held at

the University of California, Los Angeles. This conference invited more than 250

policymakers, scholars, practitioners, and foundation leaders to come together and

discuss the current state and the future of international education and area studies. While

this 250 page book has several conference papers either directly related to the Fulbright-

Hays program or weaves various aspects of the Fulbright program throughout, I chose to

select the Scarfo paper for this analysis as it directly focuses on the history of Title VI

and The Fulbright-Hays Act. Scarfo begins by discussing the history of Title VI, which

dominates most of the attention of his paper, and weaves The Fulbright-Hays Act and

programming throughout his piece.

Almost immediately, Scarfo informs the reader about The National Defense

Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 and that by passing this legislation, the United States

Congress understood that the defense and security of the United States were bound with
The Fulbright Program 10

education (Scarfo, 1998). Since this was a conference paper for invited experts in the

field Scarfo’s purpose was more to refresh the memory of conference attendees rather

than provide new or more in depth historical background. However, for the uninformed

researcher reading this conference paper and publication will only have an immediate

understanding of the history of title VI and The Fulbright-Hays Act. As previously

mentioned, Scarfo weaves the Fulbright-Hays program and legislation throughout his

paper. He provides a good explanation of Section 102(b)(6) of The Fulbright-Hays Act

and how the functions associated with this Section of The Act were assigned by President

Kennedy to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare which had responsibility of

domestic educational matters (Scarfo, 1998, p. 24). Specifically, it was agreed by the

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Office of Management and Budget,

the Department of State and Senator Fulbright that section 102(b)(6) added an

international component to Title VI. Interestingly, Scarfo works The International

Education Act (IEA) of 1966 into his historical timeline. The International Education

Act of 1966 will be mentioned again as it is a significant focus of Theodore M. Vestal’s

book on the history of international education.

International education: Its history and promise for today

This book was written by Theodore M. Vestal in 1994. Vestal continues to serve

on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at Oklahoma State University.

Vestal’s book is divided into the following three parts: “Protean International Education

and Its Connections with the Federal Government,” “A National Model: The IEA of

1966,” and “International Education in the Post-Cold War Era.” In addition, the second
The Fulbright Program 11

appendix includes both The International Education Act (IEA) of 1966 and The David L.

Boren National Security Education Act of 1991.

In this instance, I specifically chose a book that did not directly focus on

the Fulbright program. I wanted to read more of a history of international education to

see how the author(s) worked the Fulbright program into their analysis. Vestal’s book,

fits this description. The main focus of his book is The International Education Act of

1966 and The David L. Boren National Security Education Act of 1991. Vestal does a

good job of incorporating The Fulbright Act, The Fulbright-Hays Act and anecdotal

information about J. William Fulbright into the history of international education. Vestal

actually begins discussing the history of international education (or at least international

education policy) with The Morrill Act of 1862 and how Senator Justin Morrill

understood the importance of international understanding and education of U.S. citizens,

from artisans to farmers, to successfully compete in a global society. After briefly

discussing The Morrill Act of 1862, Vestal quickly jumps to the time period of World

War II which is when Senator J. William Fulbright and The Fulbright Act are introduced.

While citations to the Fulbright program in this book are limited they do provide helpful

background and understanding in the evolution of The International Education Act of

1966. Despite specific focus on The International Education Act of 1966 and The David

L. Boren National Security Education Act of 1991, this book is a must read for any

scholar wanting to gain a thorough historical understanding of international educational

exchange and policy.

References
The Fulbright Program 12

Board of Foreign Scholarships. (1986, December). Forty years: The Fulbright

program 1946-1986, Twenty-third annual report of the Board of Foreign Scholarships.

Washington, DC: U.S. Information Agency.

The Fulbright Act (Public Law 584; 79th Congress)

Johnson, W., & Colligan, F.J. (1967). The Fulbright program: A history.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. § 2458a

(Fulbright-Hays Act).

Scarfo, R.D. (1998). The history of Title VI and Fulbright-Hays. In J.N.

Hawkins, C.M. Haro, M.A. Kazanjian, G.W. Merkx and D. Wiley (Eds.), International

education in the new global era: Proceedings of a national policy conference on The

Higher Education Act, Title VI, and Fulbright-Hays Programs (pp. 23-25). Los Angeles:

International Studies and Overseas Programs, University of California Los Angeles.

Sussman, L.R. (1992). The culture of freedom: The small world of Fulbright

scholars. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Vestal, T.M. (1994). International education: Its history and promise for today.

Westport, CT: Praeger.

Additional resources consulted to better understand the history

of the Fulbright program

Board of Foreign Scholarships. (1971, December). A quarter century: The

American adventure in academic exchange. Washington, D.C.: Board of Foreign

Scholarships.
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Dubois, D.R. (1995, Fall). Responding to the needs of our nation: A look at the

Fulbright and NSEP Education Acts. [Electronic version] Frontiers: The

Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, I. Retrieved November 8, 2005, from

http://www.frontiersjournal.com/issues/vol1/index.htm.

Fulbright, J.W. (1976). The most significant and important activity I have been

privileged to engage in during my years in the senate. The Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science, 424, 1-5.

National Humanities Center Steering Committee on the Future of the Fulbright

Educational Exchange Program. (1997, July). Fulbright at fifth: Meeting the challenge

of the next fifty years. Research Triangle Park, NC: National Humanities Center.

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