The final legislative underpinnings of the Fulbright academic exchange program came with the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, which is also known as the Fulbright-Hays Act (Senator Fulbright introduced it in the Senate and Representative Wayne Hays of Ohio, in the House).

This law is still the basic charter for all U.S. Government sponsored educational and cultural exchanges. It consolidated all previous laws on the subject, retaining the principal characteristics of the program as it was developed, and at the same adding some new features to accommodate progress.

American Fulbrighters have included university presidents Derek Bok and Hanna Gray, economist Milton Friedman, scientist Joshua Lederberg, historian Henry Steele Commager, Senator Daniel Patrick Maynihan, novelists John Updike and Eudora Welty, composer Aaron Copland, actor Stacy Keach, and opera singer Anna Moffo.

In its more than 50 years, the Fulbright Program has enabled nearly a Quarter of a million people from the United States and 140 countries to live and study in foreign nations. More than 120,000 foreign nationals have taught, studied or done research in the United States, and more than 90,000 Americans have gone overseas to do the same. In fact, the Fulbright program has been referred to as "the largest and most significant movement of scholars across the face of the earth since the fall of Constantinople in 1453."