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US President Donald Trump heads a meeting in the East Room of the White House in Washington on July 7. Trump’s “Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalisation” on July 14 set in motion the termination of the Fulbright exchange programme with Hong Kong and the rest of China. Photo: AFP
Opinion
James V. Wertsch and Mark S. Wrighton
James V. Wertsch and Mark S. Wrighton

Why Donald Trump’s order to end China Fulbright exchange is dangerous

  • The Fulbright exchange programme was born out of hopes for peace in the aftermath of the second world war, but also reflected realism about the need to avoid another cataclysm
  • Stopping the flow of Fulbrighters between China and the US undermines decades of effort to build understanding and cooperation, and avoid uninformed miscalculations
On July 14, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to cancel the Fulbright exchange programme with China and Hong Kong. This decision appears to stem from the Trump administration’s desire to appear tough on China in the midst of a presidential campaign. Whatever the motivation, the order causes damage to a flagship programme that underpins America’s soft power in the world.

The Fulbright Programme was created in the wake of the second world war, when president Harry Truman signed a bill introduced into Congress by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.

The action that Trump has taken is particularly ironic, given that in 1945 Fulbright cited the Boxer indemnity scholarships as an illustration of how valuable it could be to offer support for students to study in the US. Indeed, the first Fulbright agreement with any nation was signed in Nanking on November 10, 1947.

The general aim of the Fulbright Programme is to strengthen ties with citizens and governments of other countries through exchanges of students, young professionals and teachers.

The programme has expanded to over 140 countries and awards about 8,000 grants annually in all fields of study. Roughly half of these grants go to US citizens who visit other countries and the other half to citizens of other countries who come to the US.

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Today, there are more than 380,000 Fulbrighters from over 150 countries who have participated in the programme, and its list of distinguished alumni includes 37 current or former heads of state, 60 Nobel Prize winners, 75 MacArthur “genius grant” awardees, and 88 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Riccardo Giacconi from Italy went to the US in 1956 on a Fulbright, for example, to collaborate with a physicist at Indiana University and went on to join the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, where he won the 2002 Nobel Prize in physics. And in 1965 Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh studied at Vanderbilt University on a Fulbright and earned his PhD in economics.

After a few more years in the US, Yunus returned to Bangladesh where his work as a social entrepreneur, banker, economist, and civil society leader led to his winning the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, only a small number of Fulbrighters have gone on to become Nobel Prize winners, but Fulbright’s vision for the programme was not simply to produce world-renowned scholars. Instead, the aim was the “promotion of international goodwill through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture and science”.

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The goodwill he envisioned may have been born out of worldwide hopes for peace in the aftermath of the second world war, but it also reflected wisdom about the cold, hard realism required to head off another cataclysm. Fulbright and others recognised that avoiding future military conflict would require deep understanding by Americans of cultural and political systems in other countries and vice versa.

Stopping the flow of Fulbrighters between China and the US is a dangerous step that undermines decades of effort to build understanding and cooperation between these two superpowers.

Today, more than ever, we need young people who understand through first-hand engagement the mentalities of others, in a way that allows our emerging leaders to avoid uninformed miscalculations that create resentment and conflict.

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In our view, the desired impact of a Fulbright experience for Chinese and Americans is not that they agree with one another or even like one another, although the latter is often one of the outcomes. Instead, it is that they should come to understand one another in ways that allow them to manage the differences they will encounter over the rest of their lives.

There is no better way to arrive at this than through the deeply personal experiences afforded by the Fulbright Programme. As a Fulbrighter in Moscow in 1984 in the midst of the Cold War, one of us (James V. Wertsch) came to appreciate this all too well.

He often disagreed with what his Soviet friends, let alone official propaganda, told him, and he was sometimes appalled by what his friends suffered at the hands of Soviet authorities.

But he came away from the experience realising how deeply people on both sides of the Cold War felt about their positions and how dangerous it can be to engage with the other from a position of ignorance.

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Along with students from many other US universities, several students from Washington University in St Louis have similarly benefited from their Fulbright stay in China, and Chinese students who have come to Washington University and other US institutions routinely report what an eye-opening experience it has been for them.

As the current Covid-19 crisis clearly reveals, and as climate change looms, global cooperation is needed to solve problems that threaten the future of humankind.

Cancelling the Fulbright programmes between China and the US eliminates one of the most doable paths to future successes. President Trump’s executive order should be rescinded immediately.

James V. Wertsch is David R. Francis Distinguished Professor and Director Emeritus of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. Mark S. Wrighton is Professor and Chancellor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis

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