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Fulbright Program
The flagship international education exchange program designed to promote mutual understanding between the peoples of the U.S. and peoples of other countries.
About Senator J. William Fulbright |
Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations... I do not think educational exchange is certain to produce affection between peoples, nor indeed do I think that is one of its necessary purposes; it is quite enough if it contributes to the feeling of a common humanity, to an emotional awareness that other countries are populated not by doctrines that we fear but by people with the same capacity for pleasure and pain, for cruelty and kindness, as the people we were brought up with in our own countries.
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Fulbright Program
The United States Congress created the Fulbright Program in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, to promote mutual understanding between the United States and the rest of the world, an objective that is as relevant today as it was then. This program's foremost advocate, the late Senator J.W. Fulbright, presented the bill to establish an educational exchange program only weeks after the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the years, the Fulbright Program has developed into the world's largest, best-known and most prestigious educational exchange program and has provided over 300,000 scholars and students with the opportunity to study abroad. Today, there are over 155 countries, including Japan, participating in the Fulbright Program, which has played an important role in fostering the development of leaders in various fields. With the new challenges faced by today's world, the need for the Fulbright Program is stronger than ever.
Fulbright Program in Japan
In Japan, approximately 1,000 Japanese traveled to the United States to study from 1949 to 1951, under the GARIOA (Government Aid and Relief In Occupied Areas) program. In August of 1951, then Ambassador to Japan, William J. Sebald and then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Shigeru Yoshida signed an agreement for educational exchange programs between the two nations and in 1952 the Fulbright Program commenced in Japan. For approximately thirty years after its founding, the United States government funded the program; however, since the establishment of the Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC) in December of 1979, the Japanese government has shared the cost of the program with the U.S. government. Today, both governments fund the program on an equal basis. In addition, the Japan-United States Educational Exchange Promotion Foundation (Fulbright Foundation), established by the Japanese Fulbright Alumni Association in 1986, has collected contributions from the private sector and JUSEC funds approximately 50 to 60 scholarships each for Americans and Japanese to participate in the Fulbright Program each year. From 1952, over 6,200 Japanese grantees have gone to the U.S. and nearly 2,300 Americans have come to Japan. Alumni of both the GARIOA and Fulbright Program (known as Fulbrighters) play leading roles in various fields, holding senior positions on the Supreme Court, in the Diet, in Japan's diplomatic corps, in higher education, in the media and at major corporations.
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