All twelve members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board resigned two weeks ago, citing the Trump administration’s cancellations of nearly 200 scholarships awarded to American professors and researchers.
The Fulbright Program — a cultural exchange grant program — faced sizable reductions in its 2025-26 cohort as the Department of State sent letters of rejection to "a substantial number" of scholars who had been selected. In its resignation statement, the board expressed concerns that the State Department's actions are "unlawful and damage the integrity of this storied program and America’s credibility abroad."
The board engaged in an "exhaustive and deliberate, year-long process" to determine the individuals who were supposed to receive their awards by April. Instead of sending acceptance letters, the State Department sent rejections to nearly 200 scholars "based mainly on their research topics," according to The New York Times.
The board wrote that an additional 1,200 foreign Fulbright recipients were being subject to an "unauthorized review process," and that the administration could potentially reject even more.
"We believe these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute," the board wrote in its statement.
The categories of overridden awards included "biology, engineering, architecture, agriculture, crop sciences, animal sciences, biochemistry, medical sciences, music, and history."
The board emphasized that Fulbright's legacy depends on "the integrity of the program’s selection process based on merit, not ideology, and its insulation from political interference." They noted that the Trump administration has "undermined" that integrity, which "weakens America and our national security interests."
“Fulbright research grant played a very important role in shaping my own career and gave me the ability to understand my country of focus, China, in a much deeper and richer way than I would have otherwise," Scott Moore — Penn's Fulbright contact and a 2008 Fulbright scholar — wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian. "In my personal opinion, the entire Fulbright program was and is a wise and enlightened investment in helping Americans better understand foreign countries, and vice versa.”
Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering professor Michelle Johnson traveled to Botswana as a 2020 Fulbright scholar.
“I was blessed by the opportunity to be a US Fulbright Scholar, and it allowed me to grow as a researcher and to learn much about the world," Johnson wrote to the DP. "It is a wonderful program.”
School of Social Work professor TJ Ghose spoke to the DP about his experience as a 2021 Fulbright Scholar working in India. He noted that the program is "geared towards showing the world how democracy works — how there's representation in foreign relations policies of citizens like us."
"It was the best way to be in this world as a concerned, engaged academic who is working … for the betterment of poor, impoverished communities," he added. "That, to me, was the best way to show my host institution in India … that change is necessary and possible, and their voices are important.”
Ghose warned of a mitigated impact of the Fulbright Scholars' work when faced with political interference.
“If I were a Fulbright Scholar now and I [went] back to the same communities, I wouldn't be gaining access to those communities anymore," Ghose said. “Those communities would be like, ‘Oh, you're just a mouthpiece for Trump,’ and that's a massive disservice to the Fulbright Program.”
2024 Fulbright Scholar Rachel Cypher echoed this sentiment, explaining that the program’s impact comes from “the opportunity to have a lot of dialogue that might not have otherwise occurred.”
Ghose also emphasized his support of the board's decision to resign.
“They've tried to compromise, and there is no compromise with this," he said. "So I'm very proud right now to be a Fulbright member led by a board that resigned en masse. I think that is exactly the kind of thing that will allow Fulbright to flourish in the long term.”
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