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Fulbrights Score with Support from Colleges, Universities
The U.S. Department of State has released the names of scholars who have been selected for the coveted Fulbright Scholarships, with an emphasis on the colleges and universities that produced the most successful applicants.
“When I received my letter, I was in the car with my friend, and I screamed for probably a full minute,” said Amanda Cronin, a senior at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was notified on February 25 that she would be placed in an English teaching program in Argentina next March.
The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled the popular visiting program as Fulbright scholars are prevented from traveling without restrictions. This year, Fulbright published a list of colleges and universities which lent intense support and advice to students while they compile the considerable documentation and time required to apply to the Fulbright program.
The scholarships are awarded to young professionals in the U.S. with a bachelor’s degree and to faculty, administrators, or researchers of U.S. institutions to participate in education and cultural exchanges around the world.
For international students, researchers and young professionals, the program brings about 4,000 Fulbright Foreign Students and Visiting Scholars to the United States from more than 160 countries worldwide each year to study, lecture, conduct research, or teach their native language in U.S. institutions of higher education, according to its website.
This year’s top research institutions that award doctoral degrees are Georgetown University in District of Columbia (39 scholars), Brown University in Rhode Island (38), Harvard University in Massachusetts (35), Princeton University in New Jersey (34), Yale University in Connecticut (32), University of Chicago in Illinois (31), New York University in New York City (29), University of Notre Dame in Indiana (29), Columbia University in New York City (28), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in Michigan (28).
This year’s top 10 Fulbright producing institutions that award bachelor’s degrees are Bowdoin College in Maine (24 scholars), Smith College in Massachusetts (16), Middlebury College in Vermont (15), Oberlin College in Ohio (14), Amherst College in Massachusetts (13), Davidson College in North Carolina (13), Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania (11), Macalester College in Minnesota (11), Williams College in Massachusetts (11) and Bate College in Maine (10).
“These experiences often lay the foundation for Fulbright and other postgraduate research proposals,” said Janice Jaffe, acting director of student fellowships and research at Bowdoin College in Maine. Students apply each year to engage in independent faculty-mentored research, she told VOA.
Margaret Lamb, the director of fellowships and postgraduate scholarships at Smith College in Massachusetts said many students at the college come from abroad and that the school’s study abroad program is robust.
“Our students see themselves as activists, change makers, and scholars,” Lamb said.
Smith College has a program named Smith’s Fulbright Fast Track, with goals of connecting faculty and staff with students and helping them design their proposals. Students can choose a host country, an English teaching assistantship or research project, and planning curriculum and study abroad projects with guidance from faculty and staff and to improve their proposals.
“The fact that so many in our community — faculty, advisers, alumnae, and peers — are familiar with Fulbright [Program] helps get candidates started on defining a personal Fulbright project and in gathering the support to prepare an application that meets the requirements of the program with rigor, creativity, and confidence,” Lamb told VOA in an email response.
The U.S. Department of State and the Institute of International Education (IIE), an exchange program, have been working with Fulbright Commissions and U.S. embassies around the world to assess when the Fulbright Scholars Program can resume.
Resumption of travel for the program will depend on travel warnings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the State Department, the ability of participants to obtain visas, flight availability, the operating status of foreign host institutions, administrative resources at U.S. embassies, and the availability of local facilities to protect public health, the Fulbright Scholars website stated in October 2020.
If in-person exchanges are not possible, 2020-2021 Fulbright scholars may defer their start dates. However, once a host country has been approved for an in-person exchange, Fulbright finalists do not have the option for country re-assignments, nor can they extend beyond the year they are awarded.
For finalists that withdraw from the cycle, they will be considered a Fulbright alumni and may re-apply for future Fulbright cycles, according to the Fulbright website.
Rene Cordero is a 2020 Fulbrighter who was planning to write his dissertation about student political movements during the 1960s and 1970s in the Dominican Republic during the authoritarian regime of Joaquin Balaguer. He planned to do research in the country’s government agency, Archivo General de la Nación (General Archive of the Nation). However, Cordero’s research was impacted due to the pandemic.
“I have had to alter some of the structure of my dissertation” said Cordero, a graduate student at Brown University in Rhode Island. “It has also hindered the oral history aspects of my research.”
Allison Cheung, another 2019 Fulbright Scholar, was conducting research on the accuracy of diagnostic tests in new diseases at the University of Melbourne when the pandemic halted travel last year. She remained in Australia to continue her research, postponing her plans to attend medical school in the U.S.
“I was worried that if I stayed here [in Australia], I wouldn’t be able to go back to the U.S. in time to start medical school,” said Cheung in a video interview on the Fulbright YouTube channel. “But then I realized that this is an opportunity that I’ll probably only have once in my career, to work directly in a global pandemic.”
As a new Fulbrighter, Cronin said she understands how the pandemic has taken a toll on students who anticipated travel. “I do feel really awful for those students who weren't able to travel after working so hard,” she said in a video interview with VOA. “Because I know how intense the application processes and I mean, we're all feeling the effects of this pandemic. But this one is tough, because it is seemingly a combination of your accomplishments, and then you can’t follow through on it and demonstrate that you have the ability.”
However, Cronin remains optimistic about the future. “I don't mind at all if it is a delayed start date. Just having the award is a huge honor and [an] accomplishment in itself,” she said. “A year from now, we will hopefully be in a better place as a country here [ the U.S.]. And as a world, in general, because vaccine distribution has been increasing across the board.”
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Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
"My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. "I am afraid that I won't be able to return after I go back [to China]."
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
"We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I've seen in quite a while," he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
"I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants."
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
"Beijing's intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People's Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they've learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades."
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
"I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures."
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said "99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality" and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of 'national security,' unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students' willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it's still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers," he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
"In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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