Prestigious scholarship board resigns en masse over Trump interference
President Donald Trump and his administration are continuing to attack and undermine higher education—and higher education keeps fighting back.
This time, the entire board that oversees the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Program has resigned in protest of Trump’s meddling with and delaying the scholarships they give out to top American college seniors, graduate students, young professionals, and foreign students.
According to a joint statement from the 12 board members posted to Substack Wednesday, the highly selective scholarships overridden or hampered by Trump and his minions were supposed to be awarded to study academic categories such as “biology, engineering, architecture, agriculture, crop sciences, animal sciences, biochemistry, medical sciences, music, and history.”
Related | Inside Trump's devastating attacks on higher education
"Injecting politics and ideological mandates into the Fulbright program violates the letter and spirit of the law that Congress so wisely established nearly eight decades ago,” the statement read.
The Fulbright program was established by Congress to foster international exchange and American diplomacy, but the board members warn that the Trump administration is threatening the storied scholarships.
“This proud legacy has depended on one thing above all: the integrity of the program’s selection process based on merit, not ideology, and its insulation from political interference,” the statement read. “That integrity is now undermined.”
Naturally, the Trump administration seemed to miss the mark when responding to why the board decided to resign en masse.
In a statement provided to ABC, one State Department official told the outlet that they were evaluating these Fulbright candidates for how well they aligned with Trump’s executive orders.
"It's ridiculous to believe that these members would continue to have final say over the application process, especially when it comes to determining academic suitability and alignment with President Trump's Executive Orders,” the statement said, adding that the mass resignations were a "a political stunt attempting to undermine President Trump."
Punishing students, educators, and institutions for their ideological beliefs seems to be the new norm in the Trump administration.
In the five months since the convicted felon took office, he has waged a full-frontal assault on universities by withholding funding to schools that don’t fall in line with his beliefs.
Harvard University alone has seen billions of dollars in cuts to federal funds, and Trump has tried—multiple times—to cut off international students from being able to attend Harvard altogether.
It’s unclear how far the administration will go with these attacks on higher education and if schools, or their students, will have to give way.
But shining a light on these dubious acts and refusing to cooperate with the administration is one way for these Fulbright board members to do their part in pushing back.
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