About the Fulbright Program
Academic Merit

From the outset, the Fulbright Program has been truly academic, with respect for the freedom and integrity that should characterize scholarly and intellectual discourse within and across national boundaries.

In 1947, the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board pledged to develop and maintain the highest standards in all aspects of the program. The individuals selected are of the highest caliber, demonstrating outstanding scholastic and professional abilities and whose personalities and characters will contribute to the objectives of the program.

Yet, the program also seeks an often intangible quality sometimes known as "overall appropriateness for the Fulbright program". We seek not just the academically superior, but the scholar or student who seeks a resolution to problems with sensitivity to the dynamics of cultural differences.

Yes, we seek Ambassadors: those who will bring peoples closer together, who will allow us all to see beyond our differences, and find only our humanity.

The Fulbright Program has produced several generations of leaders with broadened vision in all fields inclusive of the sciences, the arts, literature, commerce, the media, and government.

In the human sense, the program has touched the lives of nearly a Quarter of a million Fulbrighters. Yet, who can count the many citizens of the world's many countries whose lives were, somehow, touched by a Fulbrighter? It is in this immeasurable statistic that the real wealth of Fulbright lies.

In 1993, South Africa's President Nelson Mandela received the first J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, an award created to honor the spirit and career of Senator Fulbright.

In receiving the prize, President Mandela spoke about how Fulbright changes the world view and direction of people who have received them: "We are thousands of miles away. Why should people in the United States of America worry about what is happening at the tip of the African continent? It is because we have produced in this generation men and women who are not satisfied with addressing and solving the problems within the borders of their county. They regard themselves as part of humanity - men and women who have chosen the world to be the theater of their efforts."

For enquiries, email: meena@macee.org.my