An education for peace and understanding
WHEN IT was becoming clear that the tide of World War II was turning, after Midway, after Stalingrad, when Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps was on the run, an unknown, first-term congressman introduced a resolution that would help shape the post-war world.
The freshman congressman was J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas. His resolution was only one sentence, as "plain as an old hat," said Life magazine at the time: "Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) that the Congress hereby expresses itself as favoring the creation of appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace among the nations of the world, and as favoring participation by the United States therein."
In June of 1943, an isolationist Republican from Ohio, John Vorys, rose to voice his approval, and the resolution was passed. Vorys's conversion marked the beginning of bipartisan, multilateralist foreign policy that would lead to the forming of the United Nations, reversing America's decision after World War I not to join the League of Nations.
Fulbright, a former Rhodes Scholar and University of Arkansas president, was elected to the Senate the following year. He would go on to become the only senator to vote against the appropriation for Senator Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee, and, afterward, as the longest serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which so ably illuminated the absurdities of the Vietnam War.
Flowing from his early internationalist resolution came the creation of the Fulbright Scholar Program, signed into law by Harry Truman in 1946. It promoted educational exchanges between foreign students and Americans to facilitate "mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries of the world." It is a program I have been involved with over the years.
Today more than a quarter of a million participants, chosen for academic merit and leadership potential, have studied here and abroad, with funds allocated by the State Department and participating countries. Seldom has the taxpayers' money been put to better use. It is generally accepted now that exchanges of this sort helped to undermine the Soviet Union's appeal and strengthened support for - if you want to be hard-nosed - the furtherance of America's foreign policy goals. In an era of Islamic extremism the United States faces a similar task.
Not all the exchanges are a success. Radical Muslim theorist Sayyid Qutb, from whose writings Al Qaeda draws its inspiration, reacted with loathing at the licentiousness he saw around him during his time at Colorado State Teachers College in 1949. But in 50 years of traveling in Muslim countries I have found that those who have studied on our shores have an understanding and appreciation of the United States - even though they may be angry at this or that policy - that tends to inoculate and make them less susceptible to rabid anti-American propaganda.
The Fulbright program made news last week when seven students from Gaza were told their scholarships to the United States were being rescinded because of Israel's closure of the territory. Israel wants to punish Gaza for rockets that land in Israeli towns. Some reacted to the news by saying all Gazans deserved everything they got for the rockets and for having voted for Hamas. But others were horrified. This "could be interpreted as collective punishment," said Knesset Member Rabbi Michael Melchior.
As one of the disappointed seven, Abdulrahman Abdullah, told Ethan Bronner of The
But the flap opened up to question the efficacy of collective punishment in Gaza, which has come to resemble a prison camp for 1.5 million people. It is inexcusable that Gazans still rocket Israel, and unfortunate that Hamas won't recognize the Jewish state. But collective punishment to force Palestinians to heel simply has never worked.
Abdulrahman Abdullah says that his joy at being reinstated will not be complete until the other 600 or so Gazans with grants to study abroad are also released. J. William Fulbright would have agreed.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
