[HN Gopher] The Fulbright Program: Chock Full of Bright Ideas
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       The Fulbright Program: Chock Full of Bright Ideas
        
       Author : Pseudomanifold
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2025-08-03 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bastian.rieck.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bastian.rieck.me)
        
       | jalk wrote:
       | Surprised that Fulbright scholarships are still a thing, given
       | DOGE. Cultural exchange programs seems like something the current
       | US administration would get a severe rash from.
        
         | esafak wrote:
         | Exactly. If you like it, don't draw attention to it.
        
         | thomassmith65 wrote:
         | "The Fulbright Program's mission is to bring a little
         | more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more
         | compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the
         | chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace
         | and friendship." -- Senator J. William Fulbright
         | 
         | Yes, that seems out of step with the MAGA era.
        
           | ailef wrote:
           | To me it seems out of step with US foreign policy.
        
         | ModernMech wrote:
         | Like all US institutions that support higher education and
         | diversity, the Trump administration is attacking it:
         | 
         | Fulbright Board Resigns After Accusing Trump Aides of Political
         | Interference:
         | https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/politics/fulbright-boa...
         | 
         | Education Dept. Cancels Fulbright-Hays Applications, at Least
         | for Now: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/study-
         | abroad/2025...
         | 
         | Association of International Educators warns students won't
         | want to come to the US
         | https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/association-international-ed...
        
         | CobrastanJorji wrote:
         | It was really close. Check out https://fulbright.org/status
         | 
         | Trump's draft 2026 budget in May would have cut its funding by
         | 93%. In June, the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the
         | whole board, resigned in protest, because the Trump
         | administration was meddling and trying to remove funding for
         | certain foreigners and to add new inspections for scholars who
         | were wrong in some unspecified way. Fortunately, the funding
         | got back into the draft bill in mid-July.
        
       | yapyap wrote:
       | Beautiful blogpost and I wholly agree with the message of not
       | scrapping everything going on today because you can't see
       | immediate growth from it.
       | 
       | It's like if the USA was a house, Donald Trump and his goons are
       | cancelling all the utilities without realising (1) that in a
       | month the water will be shut off and the entire house will start
       | smelling like shit.
       | 
       | 1. or probably without caring, it's easy to misattribute malice
       | for stupidity when the actions being taken are THIS malicious but
       | that's what's going on. I don't necessarily think Donald Trump is
       | this stupid but I think he is just very very malicious. Though at
       | the end of the day it doesn't really matter whether he is stupid
       | or malicious or both, the consequences of what he is doing won't
       | change depending on intentions.
        
         | dhosek wrote:
         | The level of trashing federal government programs that's taken
         | place in the last 7 months is just mind-boggling. I don't think
         | I'll live long enough to see the damage undone.
        
         | Spooky23 wrote:
         | There's a dozen people with their fingers in the policy pie.
         | End of the day, the people calling the shots don't believe in
         | America as it was, and are creating a new era with their
         | application of federal power.
         | 
         | The end of the post-WW2 American era has arrived, and looking
         | at the state of the opposition, it's not coming back. The
         | courts have essentially executed a constitutional change which
         | will have far reaching impact.
         | 
         | The smart move now is to figure out what that means to you and
         | your family. Trump is a narcissist with obvious limitations.
         | The true threat is a more organized sociopath, backed by the
         | rulings of a young, craven federal judiciary, and what
         | monstrous stuff is truly possible.
         | 
         | Everything Nixon did is legal now, and no doubt worse stuff is
         | happening.
        
       | k2xl wrote:
       | Met my current best friend 15 years ago at Georgia Tech. He was a
       | Fulbright scholar from Turkey studying architecture. Really glad
       | this program existed!
        
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       (page generated 2025-08-03 23:00 UTC)