The Fulbright Difference, 1948-1992

by Arndt, Richard T.; Rubin, David Lee

• ISBN13: 9781560000853
• ISBN10: 1560000856
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-02-01
• Publisher: Transaction Pub

Summary

For almost half a century the Fulbright Program of educational exchange has invested in globalism and international understanding, opening possibilities for students and scholars to deepen their disciplines by extended exposure to foreign scholarship, libraries, cultures, and societies.
The Fulbright Difference invites 41 of these participants, American and foreign, to probe the nature of their experience in 16 countries. The goal was to go beyond the common assumption that this was a life-changing experience and ask how and why lives were changed. Following an earlier volume of testimonials, The Fulbright Experience, this second volume searches deeper into the experience and explores issues of importance for historians of society, politics, culture, intellect, and diplomacy. It carries as well a potent implied message for administrators of the Fulbright Program and policymakers in all nations.
Overall the book provides a harder look at the overseas experience than the usual collection of memoirs. The editors and authors collectively suggest that historians have only begun to understand the Fulbright impact. Among essays depicting five decades of experience are pieces by Leslie Fiedler, Georgie Ann Geyer, Irving Louis Horowitz, Henri Mendras, Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, Richard Robbins, and the principal editor. These are not sentimental reminiscences but strong ethnographic statements, skillfully presented in a critical framework that itself constitutes the first administrative history of the full 50 years of Fulbright to appear in print.
The book argues that Fulbright has become a national trust and a global treasure, but that it must be nurtured, both in quality and in size. Today it covers 125 countries with little constant-dollar growth from the cradle years when it covered no more than a dozen.
This book explains rather than celebrates - in Descartes' phrase, it exposes rather than proposes. It will be vital food for those who study international education, and lays the groundwork for further study on the American postwar relationship with the rest of the world. It will remind those who have participated in overseas exchanges how their experience fits into a larger picture, that of the "Fulbright Moment" as one author calls it. It also reminds us that going abroad is beset with dangers as well as opportunities. Above all, it reveals an unusual consensus on the indispensability of the Fulbright Program to the American way of relating to the rest of our interdependent world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction	p. 1
The Forties: Creating the Myth	p. 13
Burma Beginnings: Fulbright and Point Four	p. 15
Other Cultures and Singular Pluralisms	p. 26
Tilting at Myths	p. 38
The Fifties: Growing and Flowering	p. 53
On Being French in Chicago, 1950-51	p. 56
Three Centuries After the Mayflower	p. 65
Marriage Fulbright Style	p. 77
Fulbright I: Italy 1952	p. 88
American Encounters, Brief and Otherwise	p. 99
On Stepping into Rivers: Fulbright and UN Experiences	p. 110
From Vienna, with Love and Understanding	p. 124
From Fulbright to Cultural Diplomacy: A Memoir of Lois Roth	p. 136
The Beginnings of American History in Italy	p. 149
Italian Intellect and Foreign Influences	p. 165
The Sixties: Weathering Crisis	p. 177
A Brief Essay on Truth	p. 180
Fulbright Kicks	p. 194
Learning Equality and Democracy	p. 207
Fulbright, the Humanities and Humankind	p. 215
The Mission That Binds	p. 226
Two-Ways Times Two: An Afterword	p. 232
The Fulbright Moment: Voyages Through Values	p. 236
The Seventies: Surviving Change	p. 249
Hispanist at Large	p. 251
Of Crosses and Crossings	p. 264
Ugly Americans, Arrogant Indians, Amazing Individuals	p. 276
Behind the Curtain: Lessons In and Out of School	p. 287
The Eighties: Seeking the New	p. 297
Habits of the Mind	p. 299
And Where You Are Is Where You Are Not	p. 310
Circle of Light: A Year in Arctic Norway	p. 325
Notes from Rootstown	p. 340
Transformation by Design	p. 348
Exchanges and Excursions in France	p. 361
Germany Remembered and Reconsidered	p. 372
Letter from Lisbon	p. 384
Hang Right at the Cow: Teacher in India	p. 396
Fulbrighting on Africa's Roof	p. 410
Poland: During, After and Later	p. 419
Front-Line Journalist	p. 433
The Difference in Malawi	p. 448
1990-91: Looking Ahead	p. 457
Coming to Terms with International American Studies	p. 459
Afterword	p. 470
Index I: Countries, Regions and Political Entities	p. 477
Index II: Organizations and Institutions	p. 479
Index III: Participants and People	p. 483
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