Our future is not in the stars but in our minds and hearts. Creative leadership and liberal education, which in fact go together, are the first requirements for a hopeful future for humankind. Fostering these—leadership, learning, and empathy between cultures—was and remains the purpose of the international scholarship program.
When Senator J. William Fulbright sponsored legislation establishing the Fulbright Program, signed into law by President Truman on August 1, 1946, he saw a world devastated by war and awed by its newly acquired atomic power. Drawing from his own transformative experience as a Rhodes Scholar, the young Senator reasoned that people and nations had to learn to think globally if the world was to avoid annihilation. He believed that if large numbers of people lived and studied in other countries, "they might develop a capacity for empathy, a distaste for killing other men, and an inclination for peace."
What makes this program unique is its establishment of a global network of binational exchanges between the United States and partner nations. Today, there are 49 Binational Commissions, including Jordan, administering the Fulbright Program worldwide, along with over 100 Embassy-administered Fulbright Programs in non-Commission countries.
True binationalism was a primary objective of Senator Fulbright from the beginning. "I had not wanted this to be an American program," he wrote. "In each country, binational commissions were to develop the kind of program that made sense to them—what kinds of students or teachers and professors should be selected, what kind of research work."
The Fulbright Program is administered by the U.S. Department of State, with policy guidance from the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. This Board, composed of 12 presidentially appointed members drawn from academic, cultural, and public life, establishes guidelines for the educational exchange program.
From its inception, the Fulbright Program has maintained its academic integrity, respecting the freedom and independence that should characterize scholarly and intellectual discourse across national boundaries. The program has produced several generations of leaders with broadened vision in the sciences, arts, education, literature, business, media, and government. In human terms, it has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of Fulbrighters and, through them and the colleagues they've influenced, fostered greater understanding between the United States and nations worldwide.
This remarkable system has enabled more than 400,000 participants from the United States and over 160 countries to engage in educational exchanges. These participants include foreign nationals who have taught, studied, or conducted research in the United States, as well as Americans who have pursued similar opportunities overseas.
