The Fulbright

According to the U.S. Ambassador to Norway, I am a ‘strategic foreign policy asset’!

During the orientation for Norway Fulbright grantees in Oslo last week, we had the opportunity to visit the Nobel Institute, where meetings are held to determine each year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. We were addressed by the U.S. Ambassador, as well as the Chair of the Nobel Committee. Afterward each of us was called up to the stage to talk briefly about our research projects. It was humbling and thrilling to speak to a room full of people at the Nobel Institute, and I came away feeling very proud to be in the Fulbright Program.

The Ambassador jokingly called us foreign policy assets because of the origin and central goal of the Fulbright Program. After the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan, Senator J. William Fulbright wanted to do something to reduce the potential for future nuclear conflict. He came up with an idea that was simple and visionary: to use the proceeds from the sale of surplus war property to fund an exchange program to promote cultural understanding between countries. He believed that, after spending a full year in another country – long enough to truly come to understand a foreign culture – that an individual will cease to see the rest of world as nations on a map; instead, he/she will come to see the people that make up a nation. Those who have such an experience will therefore be less willing to choose war, and will choose diplomacy instead. As Fulbrighters, we are ‘strategic’ in the sense that we are ambassadors of U.S. culture, and hopefully we made the U.S. look good! (And we will bring cultural understanding and sensitivity home with us.)

It was wonderful to finally meet the other Fulbright grantees in person and share about our diverse research projects, from climate change research on Spitsbergen, far north in the Arctic Ocean, to the cultural impacts of tourism in the north of Norway, to the potential of using networks of robots to serve in dangerous rescue scenarios or Mars explorations, etc. Since we are located in almost all of the major cities in Norway, another excellent resource is the network of tour guides and floors on which to crash when we travel!