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WASHINGTON — Nearly all the board members of the prestigious Fulbright program that promotes international educational exchanges resigned 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 Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.
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.
“Of the 600 people who were accepted for grants, 200 were rejected by the State Department, apparently,” said Christina Standerfer of Bentonville, incoming president of the Arkansas Chapter of the Fulbright Association, the American alumni organization of the Fulbright program. “That’s just faculty,” she said.
The Fulbright Association has a status page online regarding the program and its funding.
When asked if the Fulbright program was in danger of some serious cuts, Glen Harrison of Little Rock, outgoing president of the Arkansas Chapter of the Fulbright Association, said, “We have been doing all we can as an organization to try to prevent that from happening, but there is potential, yes. Right now, it depends on what the 2026 budget is, and that has not been finalized.”
The Fulbright program was established in 1946 after legislation introduced by J. William Fulbright, a Democratic senator from Arkansas. The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 formalized legal statutes for the program. It says the selection of scholars, teachers and others falls under the authority of a 12-member board appointed by the president.
Harrison said Fulbright’s papers are at the University of Arkansas library in Fayetteville, and the Fulbright program’s papers will be deposited there.
“So we’ve got a very large stake in the program,” he said. “It’s been going on for over 75 years, and it would certainly be a shame to lose it. About 8,000 people participate in Fulbright every year. About 4,000 Americans go from the U.S. overseas, and about 4,000 overseas students and scholars come to the U.S.”
The State Department is also 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.
All but one of the 12 board members resigned, according to Carmen Estrada-Schaye, who is the only remaining board member.
“I was appointed by the president of the United States and I intend to fill out my term,” Estrada-Schaye said.
The board posted the memo online 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.
The State Department did not reply to a request for comment Wednesday morning.
During a Senate hearing last month to review President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget request for the State Department, U.S. Senator John Boozman, R-Ark., asked Rubio about the Fulbright program.
“Forty-four Fulbright alumni have served as heads of state and government,” said Boozman. “Eighty-nine foreign governments contribute over $90 million annually. It seems like every time you’re in a foreign country and visiting with the cabinet members, half of them are Fulbright scholars and they’re very, very proud.”
Boozman “urged Rubio to work collaboratively on a solution that strengthens the program while addressing modern challenges,” according to a news release.
“I think that’s most certainly going to be a part of our process,” Rubio told Boozman. “We understand that and will work very closely with you on those priorities. I do think what we want to do is share the same goal. We’re going to be engaged with you in this appropriations process.”
Boozman couldn’t be reached for comment.
The board resignations come as Trump and his top aides seek to bend academic institutions to their ideological beliefs. The State Department’s public diplomacy office is run by Darren Beattie, a political appointee who was fired from a job during the first Trump administration after he gave a talk at a conference attended by white nationalists. He has made social media posts on white grievances, including one saying “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”
The administration is trying to withhold federal funding, mainly for science research, from several universities and in some cases is demanding changes to departments. It has tried to stop foreign students and scholars from coming to Harvard University, but a court has temporarily barred the administration from acting on that order.
Rubio told the State Department last month to stop taking new appointments for foreign citizens applying for student or exchange visas while the agency expands scrutiny of social media posts by the applicants. American universities rely on tuition payments by foreign students for a major part of their revenue and value the research expertise of those students and visiting scholars.
Top Trump administration officials say many American universities are too liberal in their curricula and must insert more conservative ideas into their teaching, research and hiring practices. The administration has also dismantled research institutions established by Congress, including the Wilson Center and the United States Institute of Peace. A federal judge ruled last month that the administration’s gutting of the Institute of Peace was illegal.
The nearly 200 scholars who are receiving rejection letters are part of a group of about American scholars initially approved by the board over the winter.
“The bipartisan Fulbright Board was mandated by Congress to be a check on the executive and to ensure that students, researchers and educators are not subjected to the blatant political favoritism that this administration is known for,” Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“While I understand and respect the bipartisan Fulbright Board for resigning en masse rather than grant credibility to a politicized and unlawful process,” she added, “I am painfully aware that today’s move will change the quality of Fulbright programming and the independent research that has made our country a leader in so many fields.”
Shaheen and the board asserted that the State Department was violating the congressional statute by rejecting or reviewing the scholarship candidates already approved by the board, the people familiar with the issues said.
The nearly 200 American scholars who are receiving rejection letters from the State Department are about a fifth of the total U.S. scholars approved by the board over the winter.
Beattie and his aides appear to be rejecting them based on their stated research topics, which include climate change; environmental resilience; migration; gender, race and ethnicity; and homelessness, said the people familiar with the State Department’s actions. The topics also include several in the sciences, such as biology, agriculture and animal studies, according to the board memo.
Information for this article was contributed by Edward Wong of The New York Times and Bill Bowden of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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