Topline
All 12 members of the Fulbright Program’s board, appointed by President Donald Trump, resigned early Wednesday morning after claiming the administration “usurped the authority” of the board and canceled scholarships for nearly 200 U.S. professors and researchers, according to a report from The New York Times.
The State Department is allegedly reviewing hundreds of Fulbright applications in an 'unauthorized' ... More
The board publicly announced its resignation on Substack at around 10 a.m., where they said they would step away from the program rather than “endorse unprecedented actions that we believe are impermissible under the law.”
Members, including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., told The Times they were concerned that appointees at the Department of State acted “illegally” by canceling the scholarship for professors and researchers prepared to go overseas for the summer.
The State Department, which mandates the program, is allegedly subjecting the applications of 1,200 foreign Fulbright recipients to what the board called “an unauthorized review process” — the board also claimed that the administration has denied awards to “a substantial number” of individuals selected for the 2025-26 academic year.
Forbes has reached out to the State Department for comment.
The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board’s dozen members — who are appointed by the president of the United States — oversee the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the U.S. Scholar Program, the Teacher Exchanges program and a slew of others which grant around 400,000 students, professors and researchers from more than 160 countries the opportunity to study, teach or conduct research abroad. The programs collectively provide around 8,000 merit-based grants for U.S. scholars to go overseas and foreign scholars to come to the United States each year.
Foreign scholars whose applications are under review by the State Department — and who’ve been approved by the board to come to the United States — were meant to receive acceptance letters around April, according to The Times. Members of the board also said they were concerned Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s budget request for the next fiscal year cuts spending for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which the Fulbright Program is mandated under. This could cut spending from $691 million to $50 million. In May, Rubio said the State Department would pause scheduling new interviews for student visa applicants, which has affected schools like Harvard University and Columbia University.
The Fulbright Program was initially excluded from the Trump administration’s widespread freeze of over 10,000 federal programs earlier this year, but recipients began facing cut-offs to their payments and scholarship funding in the following weeks.