America’s biggest educational exchange program is on its last legs. President Donald Trump’s Fiscal Year 2027 Budget recently proposed to cut the Fulbright Program by nearly 80%.
The cut comes during the 80th year of the program, which was founded at the behest of its namesake, Senator J. William Fulbright, in 1946. Today, the Fulbright Program operates in partnership with over 80% of the world’s countries, but the proposed cuts jeopardize its continued existence.
The mission of the Fulbright Program is “to increase mutual understanding and support friendly and peaceful relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”
It does this through academic and cultural exchange, awarding thousands of grants annually for American students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals to complete projects abroad and thousands more for their foreign counterparts to conduct projects in the United States.
According to the Department of State, which provides funding for the program, Fulbright alumni have gone on to win 62 Nobel Prizes, 82 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships and 98 Pulitzer Prizes. Moreover, 44 have served as current or former heads of state.
Despite its prestige as the US government’s flagship educational exchange program, Fulbright has experienced a growing crisis of legitimacy in recent years. It is this crisis of legitimacy that has left it so vulnerable to draconian funding cuts.
I have seen this firsthand. I received a Fulbright grant in 2016-17 and another in 2023-24 to conduct academic research in India. When I compare my experience from my first and second Fulbright, two changes stand out.
First, there was a marked demographic increase in Indian-American grant recipients in my most recent Fulbright cohort. When I arrived in India to look for housing before beginning my research, the head of the regional Fulbright office informed me that other grantees from the United States were staying in properties owned by their relatives in India.
Unlike its earlier goals of cultural diplomacy, ambassadorship and exchange, the program has now become an important avenue for cultural rediscovery. While Fulbright calls on its American cultural ambassadors to find an “India family” among their “colleagues and neighbors,” many Fulbrighters have a family waiting for them before their grant even starts.
The Indian immigrant population in the United States has increased nearly fivefold from 450,000 in 1990 to 2,163,000 in 2024, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The idea that Americans now need to travel all the way to India for cultural exchange is not nearly as convincing as it was in recent decades.
It’s no wonder the Fulbright Program in India has become increasingly oriented toward Indian-Americans rediscovering their cultural roots. The opportunity for cultural rediscovery may serve the personal goals of these grant recipients, but it is a far cry from Fulbright’s raison d’être: fostering mutual understanding through cultural ambassadorship.
Second, many Fulbrighters actively rejected US foreign policy during my more recent grant. While some were shocked when Trump was elected in 2016, they didn’t channel their sentiments into organized criticism of the Department of State during my first Fulbright.
In contrast, when I attended the 2024 South and Central Asia Fulbright Conference, many Fulbrighters distributed buttons in support of Palestine and in protest of American funding for Israel’s war.
During the closing session when all Fulbright Program staff were present, the two Fulbrighter MCs stopped the event to read a statement in condemnation of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Most participants responded to the statement with applause. No one attempted to interrupt the MCs when they expressed direct criticism of the Department of State.
The end of humanitarian interventionism as the dominant ideology of American foreign policy has further undermined the justification for Fulbright.
George W. Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and Barack Obama bombed seven countries in 2016 alone, but these wars were dressed up in the language of humanitarianism — toppling authoritarian dictators, liberating oppressed women and broadly fighting terrorism.
Joe Biden’s bankrolling of what many scholars describe as a genocide in Gaza, followed by Trump’s war on Iran and threats to wipe out its civilization, has destroyed most Americans’ belief in humanitarian interventionism. It seems absurd now to believe that any program sponsored by the US Department of State is devoted to fostering “peaceful relations.”
The long-term effects of mass migration and Americans’ widespread disapproval of their government’s foreign policy have combined to undermine the justification for the Fulbright Program.
I am sad to see that other Americans may not have the same opportunities to conduct Fulbright projects in the future. But I am not surprised that the program faces the existential threat that it does today.
Vincent D. Kelley is a PhD candidate, Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania.
