This gushing review of the Fulbright Program for “citizen diplomats” is elite pap:
Since Aug. 1, 1946, the Fulbright Program — the U.S. Department of State’s flagship international exchange program — has withstood the test of time to continually enhance mutual understanding between Americans and citizens of more than 160 partner countries worldwide. But what makes the Fulbright Program a remarkable return-on-investment for the U.S. government, as well as partner governments globally?
The only actual example he cites is from Afghanistan. Needless to say, that hasn’t aged well: my guess is that the article was written before that debacle.
I think programs like this may be designed to expose people to other cultures and make them understand them better, but I think the result is that it pushes people to see everything through the narrow, provincial woke lens that is fashionable these days. That’s what’s basically wrong with the way Americans view the world around them: products of a monoculture, they are incapable of seeing anything in any terms other than their own. The Afghanistan disaster is just an outsized example of the consequences of this kind of blindness, but there are others.
I said in an earlier post about Fulbright that “Fulbright was one of those people who was educated far past his ability to properly absorb it”, and I think his program simply perpetuates it to others. If they take down his statue at the University of Arkansas for whatever reason, there may be tears shed, but they won’t be mine.
Positive Infinity 