Office of Science & Technology - The 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Austria: 1950 - 2010: Seeing the World as Others See It
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The 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Austria: 1950 - 2010: Seeing the World as Others See It Print E-mail
bridges vol. 26, July 2010 / Feature Articles


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This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Austria. More than any other academic or cultural exchange program, it has contributed to promoting mutual understanding between the people of Austria and the United States and has become an irreplaceable network promoting Austro-American relations. Since its inception on June 6, 1950, the Austrian-American Educational Commission,
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The first Austrian Fulbright Scholars arriving in New York City aboard the "Constitution" in 1951.
better known as the Fulbright Commission, has overseen some 5,400 students, teachers, scholars, and professionals from both countries who have participated in bilateral educational exchange. Since the 1960s, an additional 2,650 American university graduates have also served as teaching assistants at schools in communities large and small throughout Austria. New innovative programs like the Distinguished Fulbright Chairs at six Austrian universities and joint grants with institutions outside of pure academia have been added in recent years.


Senator J. William Fulbright

The Fulbright Educational Exchange Program owes its origins to Senator J. William Fulbright, who in 1946 created an institution based on a vision of peace through dialogue with other cultures by way of international educational exchange. The Fulbright program takes on a special Austrian dimension because of Fulbright's special and close personal relationship to Austria. In late 1928, at the age of 23, J. William Fulbright spent half a year in post-WW I Vienna. Through journalist friends, Fulbright learned of the tensions rising in advance of the threatening political turmoil in Central Europe, the fallout from the Treaty of Versailles. His previous studies as a Rhodes Scholar from 1925 to 1928 had taken him to England's Oxford University, where he was introduced to the enrichment of differing world views. These two experiences - Vienna and the world of international politics together with Oxford, the world of international education - formed a synthesis, which enormously impacted his life, redirecting his horizons from a parochial background in a small Arkansas town to the world at large. These were formative years that would shape his later vision of the need for dialogue between cultures, based on overcoming the limitations of one's cultural roots while accepting other versions of reality ... "to see the world as others see it," as he so often claimed.

Ten years after returning home to the United States, Fulbright became president of the University of Arkansas and from there went on to become a member of the US House of Representatives. The Second World War had ended, but the implications of the carnage evoked by the war and the advent of nuclear weapons elicited in him a fear - one that forged a connection between the prospect of nuclear destruction and Albert Einstein's admonition that "we must acquire a new manner of thinking about mankind, if mankind is to survive."

Within this historical context, it was Fulbright's internationalist stance, together with his relative
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US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, Senator J. William Fulbright, and Austrian Plenipotentiary Ludwig Kleinwächter signing the original Fulbright Exchange Agreement in Washington, DC, on June 6, 1950.
disillusionment with the United Nations after years  of struggle between nations unwilling to sacrifice national interests for the greater good, that fostered his  vision: A transformation of the way nations viewed each other would not occur in the rarefied atmosphere of international relations, nor among the wealthy or the elite, but rather through young people experiencing a diversity of world views through international exchange. Among those participating would be future leaders who would learn other perspectives from their experiences abroad, leaders who would eventually come to shape "policies based on tolerance and national restraint."

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