Fulbright Association
 





Fulbright Association
666 11th Street, N.W.
Suite 525
Washington, D.C. 20001
Phone: (202) 347-5543
Fax: (202) 347-6540

History of the Fulbright Association

In 1976, the Board of Foreign Scholarships (now the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board) convened regional Fulbright alumni meetings and a Bicentennial Convocation to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Fulbright Program.  The Fulbright Association, Inc., grew out of resolutions adopted in those meetings by alumni who believed that their Fulbright experience had enabled them to acquire insights and contacts of a kind potentially valuable to the larger society and that these insights and contacts had largely gone untapped.

Alumni also saw the need to foster a strong sense of tradition among Fulbright Program participants and to build an active constituency for the program to ensure its continuance for future generations.  Established on February 27, 1977, as the Fulbright Association of Alumni of International Educational and Cultural Exchange, the Fulbright Association, Inc., is a national, private nonprofit corporation whose membership is composed of alumni and friends of the Fulbright Program.  The Association serves as an important vehicle for supporting and promoting international educational and cultural exchange and for furthering the ideal most associated with the Fulbright name -- mutual understanding among the peoples of the world.

In February 1979, the Association surveyed the more than 5,000 alumni it had located in order to study their perceptions of the professional and personal value of Fulbright awards and to present the findings anonymously to the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.  The Association received a $10,000 grant from the Exxon Education Foundation for costs of survey publishing, mailing, and processing.   The survey was a great success, achieving a 69 percent response rate.  By 1985, the Association had located current addresses for approximately 14,000 alumni.

In April 1987, Association headquarters were moved from Bryn Mawr, Pa., to Washington, D.C., and executive director Harriet Mayor, who later became Senator Fulbright's wife, began work full-time.  The year 1987 also saw the publication of The Fulbright Experience 1946-1986: Encounters and Transformations, edited by the association's founding president, Arthur Power Dudden, and another of it early presidents, Russell R. Dynes, and the successful 10th anniversary meeting during which Fulbright artists performed at the Kennedy Center.

In addition to building the roster of alumni and recruiting members, the Association began supporting with information and rebated dues a system of chapters that had been growing spontaneously since 1980 and cultivating the development of new chapters.   Mayor instituted the publication of the Report of the Nations, a compilation of information on Fulbright alumni organizations and activities around the world.   The association's interest and ability to further a "global network" of Fulbright alumni associations was formally recognized in 1983 by the executive directors of Fulbright Commissions in Europe and Israel in the following resolution:  "We recognize that the experience and support of former Fulbrighters can help to maintain the high quality of the Fulbright Program in the future; we shall assist the formation and activities of Fulbright alumni within our respective countries; and we shall encourage their cooperation with the Fulbright Alumni Association of the United States of America."In July 1990, Jane L. Anderson was named executive director. The Fulbright Difference, 1948-1992, edited by Richard T. Arndt, a past president of the Association, and David Lee Rubin was published by Transaction Press in February 1993.  A volume of 37 memoirs of U.S. and foreign participants in the Fulbright Program, the book also furthered the association's efforts to strengthen the global Fulbright alumni network.

 

In May 1993, the Fulbright Association held the first special event benefit in its history, an 88th Birthday Tribute to Senator Fulbright.  The benefit involved President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in paying tribute to Senator Fulbright through the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  In 1993, the Association also launched the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, awarding the inaugural prize to former South African President Nelson R. Mandela on October 1, 1993, in a ceremony at the U.S. Department of State.  The Fulbright Prize was awarded in 1994 to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; in 1995 to former Austrian Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky; in 1996 to former Philippines President Corazon C. Aquino; in 1997 to Czech Republic President Václav Havel; in 1998 to former Chilean President Patricio Aylwin Azocar; in 1999 to Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; in 2000 to former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari; in 2001 to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; in 2002 to former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata; in 2003 to former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso; in 2004 to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; and in 2005 to former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Recognizing the need to provide first-hand testimonials on the benefits of the Fulbright Program for government advocacy purposes, the Fulbright Association conducted the Enrich America Survey in 1997.  As benefits of the Fulbright Program are usually long-term in nature, it is important for Fulbrighters to keep their Senators, Representatives, and the Fulbright Association abreast of positive developments in their lives that result from their Fulbright exchange in order to help document the Fulbright Program's success.   The Enrich America Survey provides an easy method of providing this documentation.

To keep members and friends informed of developments affecting the Fulbright Program, the Association inaugurated a comprehensive Web site in April 1998, which has become the contact point for information on Fulbright alumni organizations worldwide.

The Fulbright Association currently has more than 7,500 individual members, approximately one-third of whom are life members. The Association’s institutional membership roster of approximately 170 includes colleges, universities, and international educational organizations throughout the country.

Minutes of the association's first general meeting of members in February 1977 record participants' desire to create an alumni organization that would extend and build upon the Fulbright experience and enable alumni to give something back.  Those motivations remain remarkably strong and constant.  The Fulbright Association, Inc., exists to help alumni contribute to the well-being of the Fulbright Program, to the academic and other institutions and the communities they return to, and to the country that made possible their Fulbright experience.