The entire board that oversaw the prestigious Fulbright scholarship program under the State Department has resigned in protest of what its members say is the Trump administration’s meddling in its affairs. The alleged meddling is the latest sign of how President Donald Trump is trying to politicize and censor what should be the most uncontroversial functions of government.
The Fulbright scholarship program has long served as an uncontroversial instrument of American soft power.
The Fulbright program is the federal government’s premier international educational exchange program. It offers thousands of highly competitive grants every year for Americans to study, teach and conduct research all over the world, and it also offers grants for foreigners to study and research in the U.S. The bill that created it, which became law in the aftermath of World War II and was named after Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, called for proceeds from the sales of surplus war property to fund the “promotion of international good will through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture, and science.”
The Fulbright scholarship program has long served as an uncontroversial instrument of American soft power and a way to cultivate cosmopolitanism among America’s high-performing students, artists and professionals. It hasn’t been viewed as partisan. Until now, apparently.
The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board released a statement on Wednesday explaining that it had “voted overwhelmingly to resign from the board,” rather than endorse unprecedented actions that they believe are “impermissible under the law, compromise U.S. national interests and integrity, and undermine the mission and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago.”
The statement explains that the law creating the Fulbright program “clearly specified that the Fulbright Board has final approval authority of applicants” and alleges that the Trump administration “has usurped the authority of the Board and denied Fulbright awards to a substantial number of individuals who were selected for the 2025-2026 academic year.” It also claims that the administration is “injecting politics and ideological mandates” into its approach to the program and “currently subjecting an additional 1,200 foreign Fulbright recipients to an unauthorized review process.”
The statement declares that “these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute.” The New York Times, which first reported on the mass resignation, said that the State Department had not replied to a request for comment. The nature and veracity of the board’s allegations have not yet been confirmed. But we do know that, in general, the Trump administration has openly sought to apply ideological litmus tests tied to issues like diversity and inclusion, and criticism of Israel, to law firms, universities and public cultural institutions, including museums. It has also sought to create new de factro ideological tests for citizenship by attempting to deport legal immigrants on the basis of constitutionally protected speech. Trump is relentlessly encroaching upon independent institutions and free speech. It’s sad to watch as his politicization project may be extending into straightforward scholarship programs.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio.
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