[00:00:01] ANDREW SZERI:
Good afternoon.
(crowd murmurs)
Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Szeri. I’m a faculty member here at Berkeley and Vice Provost for Graduate Studies.
It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the first of what we hope will be many Harvest Lectures here on October the 29th, 2013. I’m going to be making some remarks first, and then I’m going to introduce one of the two individuals who made this lecture series possible. And then we will move to the main event, Mrs. Harriet Fulbright who will be delivering her lecture.
Following the lecture there will be a question and answer, and we have a reception at the end. So, if you’ll forgive me for reading, because this is the first of the Harvest Lecture Series, I have many people to thank, and I don’t want to step afoul of my responsibilities. So, I’d like to begin by thanking first the International House for their generosity in providing this lovely space, the Chevron Auditorium, for today’s event, as well as for co-sponsoring the reception.
So, this lecture is in part about the Fulbright Programs as you will hear. And I want to tell you that the San Francisco Bay Area welcomes between 70 and 80 Fulbright Visiting Scholars every year. Since its inception, scholars from more than 155 countries worldwide have participated in the Fulbright Program, doing research and collaborating in many prestigious universities.
The San Francisco Bay Area Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Program, one of six such programs in the United States, seeks to enhance the experience of these scholars through events which bring them together on a regular basis to collaborate and form Fulbright connections, as well as to learn more about the American people, our culture, and our customs. The program is planned and executed by Marilyn Herend, the coordinator, and a volunteer advisory committee, which organizes a variety of events for the year. Liliane Koziol, a Fulbright Alumna from Madagascar, is the current chairperson of this committee.
Liliane is also the Director of Programs for International House, where nearly a dozen Fulbright Scholars and alumni are currently in residence. Thank you, Marilyn and Liliane, for all that you do. We would also like to welcome Erwin Chow, who is President of the local Fulbright Alumni Chapter for Northern California, as well as any group members who are here today.
And also welcome to those Fulbright Scholars past, present, and future who are in the audience. Actually, just out of interest, could I have a show of hands of all people who have been touched by Fulbright Programs in the past? That’s about 60% of the audience, I would say.
(applause)
The University of California Berkeley has been a leader among academic institutions in producing Fulbright Scholars. Berkeley has earned a place among the top five US producers of Fulbright Scholars six times in the last decade alone. Success in the Fulbright Program has long been an early indicator of excellence in scholarship, of course, as well as a stepping stone toward other noteworthy future achievements.
Many of our distinguished faculty have been awarded Fulbright Fellowships before receiving membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academies, and so on. Among our most celebrated faculty members is economist and professor Oliver Williamson, who received a Fulbright in 1998, and in 2009 was named Nobel Laureate in the economic sciences. We are honored that Mrs. Fulbright is here today as the Harvest Distinguished Women Lecture Series inaugural speaker.
We are equally thrilled to have Esther Ma and Harvey Lee here with us today. Their generous support has made this lecture series possible. I will invite Esther to the stage shortly to share her thoughts, but first I would like to say a few more words about Mrs. Fulbright.
Harriet Mayor Fulbright is a prominent educator, philanthropist, and the wife of the late Senator J. William Fulbright. His 1945 bill called for the promotion of international goodwill through the exchange of students in the field of education, culture, and science, and currently operates in more than 155 countries where it places over 1,900 grantees annually. Harriet Fulbright is an influential force, and I could say also a force of nature in the world of education, diplomacy, and the arts.
Based out of Washington DC, she works to encourage partnerships between public and private sectors in enhancing American cultural understanding, and lectures widely to promote the imperatives of a global education. She has served as the Executive Director of President Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities from 1997 to 2000, and is currently the unofficial ambassador of the Fulbright Program, traveling internationally to speak on the pivotal role the Fulbright Program plays in global education. From 2006 to 2007, 2011, forgive me, she was president of the J. William and Harriet Fulbright Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the Fulbright legacy and promoting conflict resolution through peace, collaboration, and education.
She is also a noted educator, having taught English and creative writing in Korea, Russia, and the United States. Mrs. Fulbright received a BA from Radcliffe College at Harvard and a Master’s in Fine Arts from the George Washington University. She has been honorary doctorates from William& Mary College, Long Island University, Pace University, and the University for Development Studies in Ghana.
In 2002, she was awarded the Middle Cross of the Order of Merit by Hungary, their highest civilian award, and in 2006, was honored with the Order of Australia by the Governor-General of Australia for her service in the cultural exchange between our two nations. It is my pleasure to welcome Mrs. Fulbright to de– deliver the first Harvest Distinguished Women Lecture. The Harvest Distinguished Women Lecture series features women from a broad range of disciplines and cultures.
It offers a forum to foster thoughtful dialogue and an opportunity to be inspired by outstanding and accomplished real-world women leaders. The theme for each lecture varies from year to year, and the lectureship recognizes the entrepreneurial vision of University of California alumna Esther Ma and her husband, alumnus Harvey Li of Hong Kong. Esther received her bachelor’s degree in economics and French from Berkeley in 1987, and her husband, Harvey, received his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1988.
In this year, 2013, these two generous individuals graciously s– provided support for the Harvest Lectureship. So now please join me in welcoming Esther Ma to the stage to make her remarks.
(applause)
(footsteps)
[00:07:46] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thanks, Dean Szeri. The Honorable Mrs. Harriet Fulbright, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies Andrew Szeri, distinguished guests, fellow Cal alumni, parents, and friends of the I-House, it is indeed my great honor to be standing here today to officiate the launch of the first Harvest Distinguished Women Lecture Series. It is with pleasure that I’m revisiting my alma mater because this place does have a special meaning in my heart because this was where the Harvest seed was sown.
Well, here, let me share with you my wedding poem, which was unveiled on May 21st, 1994, entitled Harvest of the Vines of Love. The first verse read like this. “Two–” No.
“One beautiful morning by the Sather Gate, two Berkeley freshmen met by fate.” And the ending verse read like this. “Both are spiritually encouraged that only true love and trust will allow the 1985 vintage to yield a fruitful harvest.”
So indeed, today, 28 years later, my husband, Harvey, and I, also known as Harvest when our names are combined, are here to launch the Harvest Distinguished Lecture Series. We’re so proud to be reuniting with Sather Gate, reconnecting with Cal for a meaningful harvest, and this time, it’s related to education and international goodwill. Well, as a mother of two young daughters, and as the founder of my own public relations company, which has served a lot of women brands and products over the past 18 years, as the director of Zonta Club of Hong Kong, whose aim is to elevate the socio-economic and education status of women, and also as the general Committee member of my high school alma mater, Diocesan Girls’ School, as an active mentor and director for the Golden Bauhinia Woman Entrepreneurs Association in Hong Kong, also the Woman of Influence Board of the French Chamber of Commerce, and also, you know, I was actually the guest speaker for many woman forums, and on the lighter side of life, I was one of the founding members of Femmes du Vin Society, which is to promote the appreciation and education of wine among woman, I could more or less label myself as a true activist of woman issues and interests, a strong supporter of woman’s education and equality, and also a passionate promoter of some of the more popular woman and beauty brands from my notable clients, such as Lancome, Biotherm, The Body Shop, Neutrogena, Dior, Shiseido, to name a few.
So when Dean Szeri and Mr. Nakayama approached me almost a year ago in Hong Kong to offer me this endowment opportunity, it didn’t take me long to accept the offer, which is to endow a Distinguished Woman Lecture Series featuring influential woman around the world as guest speakers to speak on different topics evolving around the following, but not limited to, economics or education, philanthropy or diplomacy, arts or culture, PR or marketing, entrepreneurship or leadership sports, parenting, family values, or even food and wine. And here I am today, you know, to reap the fruitful harvest of presenting the inaugural Harvest Distinguished Women Lecture Series where Mrs. Harriet Fulbright is the inaugural guest speaker. Mrs. Fulbright, on behalf of the 53 Fulbright Scholars in Hong Kong since the year 2003, I sincerely wish to thank you for your kind support to make many education dreams come true.
And also on behalf of my client, the Lee Hysan Foundation, I also like to thank you for your kind sponsorship of the Lee Hysan Foundation Fulbright Hong Kong Scholar Award Program, which was launched last year to allow PhD students to engage in Fulbright educational experiences in the US for four years in a row. And since yesterday, well, actually was the deadline for application of many Hong Kong scholars, I hereby would also like to wish everyone the best of luck in being awarded the Fulbright Scholarship So then they can also, you know, broaden the cross-cultural learning and sharing, they can develop the global awareness, and of course, foster international goodwill.
Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the influential quintessential woman leader in education, diplomacy, humanities, and the arts, Mrs. Harriet Mayor Fulbright.
(applause)
[00:13:41] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
It’s a real pleasure to be here. Can everybody hear me? Yes, I hope.
In the world today, thanks to modern technology in the form of the rapid means of transportation and highly developed forms of instant communication, the education of both young and old outside their familiar settings has become so widespread that it is sometimes hard for us to remember what life was like before it was so easy to move from one continent to another in a matter of hours, pick up the telephone and speak to a friend or relative on the other side of the world, or turn on the television set and watch events a continent away while they’re still happening. What is heartening is that along with these developments, we have seen a measurable decrease in wars, both big and small.
[00:14:48] GEORGE BRESLAUER:
One of the strongest deterrents to martial mayhem is, in my view, the rapid growth of collaborative activity in the form of studies and research, of aid, and of proponents and supporters of international educational exchange. In this country, one of the greatest advocates of this means of encouraging understanding between differing societies was a man named J. William Fulbright. And his background might give you a better understanding of why and how he established the program bearing his name, which has spread over 155 countries around the world and changed the lives of countless people.
How this happened is an interesting story. It’s the tale of a man who used his experience and intellect to create something for the benefit of the whole world, and in no small way, to change the course of human history. While this heightened respect for and understanding of other ways of living and thinking have not eliminated all fighting among all nations, it certainly has slowed the rush to battle when disagreements or misunderstandings arise between nations.
J. William Fulbright was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the middle child in a family of five. When he became a teenager, his father decided that he should do something useful his summer vacation and sent him to work on a farm. Most of his days were spent working in the fields, where he became not only truly hot and tired, but covered with chaff by the end of each day.
The next summer, he was given the choice of more farm work or summer school. And I’m sure you can guess what he chose. As a result, he finished high school a year early and entered the University of Arkansas.
Now, Bill Fulbright was a lively young man who was both intelligent and athletic. While in college, he did equally well in his studies and on the sports field, ending up on the University of Arkansas’s football team. Very few people know that.
His English teacher, who took a special interest in him, talked with him often, and asked about his plans for the future when he became a senior. “I don’t know,” was the answer. “I haven’t gotten– given it much thought.”
“Apply for the Rhodes Scholarship,” his teacher replied. So Fulbright looked into it, and he was intrigued. The requirements were threefold.
The applicant had to show proof of his ability to excel not only academically, but in athletics as well. And furthermore, he had to give some indication of his leadership potential. Now, Bill had very good grades, he was on the college football team, and in his senior year, he was class president.
So, he applied and he was accepted as a Rhodes Scholar. After spending the summer with his family and preparing for his trip to England, he took a train east to New York City to board the ship across the Atlantic. Now, having grown up in a town where the population was measured in thousands, New York was a true shock that he never forgot, nor did he ever grow to like it.
I was born there. But the boat ride from there to England was pleasant, and he arrived at Oxford ready to begin his new life. When, while he admitted that his studies with his English tutor were most ch–the most challenging of his life, he really liked Professor McCallum and he enjoyed the work, creation, completion of his scholarship, he spent a short time sightseeing in Europe and then returned to the United States, landing in– Washington, D.C.
A meeting with a very attractive, intelligent young lady named Betty persuaded him to spend more time in the area. So he entered the George Washington University Law School. Kind of funny reason for doing that, but it turned out well.
Within the next two years, he was married and he earned a law degree. Back in Arkansas, after graduation, he accepted a position at the University of Arkansas Law School and taught there for several years until one of his former students came to visit him. The young man had held a seat in the US House of Representatives and he had decided not to run in the next election, but he wanted to make sure that his place would be filled by somebody he respected and would do a good job for his state.
“It’s time you put your money where your mouth is,” he told Fulbright. “During your tenure as professor of constitutional law, you constantly reminded your classmates that democracy only works if the best and the brightest run for office. Now, I can assure you that it is a very rewarding experience, but I am now moving on to other work, and I wanna make sure that my seat will be taken by someone worthy of this office.
In other words, I’m here to persuade you to take my place.” Well, after consulting his wife, Betty, he decided that his former student had made a compelling argument, so he took the challenge and he won the House seat for Arkansas. A little over a year later, one of the US senators from Arkansas announced his intention to retire from office.
Very shortly, a fellow Arkansan that Fulbright did not have respect for announced his candidacy for the position of senator, so he immediately decided to run for the Senate seat himself. It was a hard-fought battle, but well worth it in his mind, and he won. As senator, Fulbright was a practical, hardworking, studious, and unassuming person, one who liked to get things done without worrying about credit or ceremony.
One example of his attitude and actions occurred early in the 1960s while on a trip to Costa Rica with President Kennedy and a group of his Senate colleagues. On reaching their destination, there was a good deal of confusion over who should travel to town in which limousine and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, namely Fulbright, was inadvertently left behind at the airport. Now, I am sure that there were other vehicles that could’ve taken him to town had he put up enough of a fuss.
But no, he quietly asked for directions to San Jose and walked the four miles to the city. It was exceedingly hot and dusty, but in about an hour, he entered the US Embassy where he found a pile of baggage belonging to the group. Missing, however, was his briefcase.
“oh,” a young Foreign Service officer said when he was asked about it, “I locked the briefcase with your confidential papers in the top secret case.” For the first time, Fulbright raised his voice. “Top secret?
You locked my toothbrush and my shaving kit?” Now, practical and unassuming does not mean ordinary. That word did not ever fit this man.
As soon as he assumed his Senate seat, he was a person constantly in search of unusual ideas which could be of benefit to his constituency, ideas beyond commonplace or the accepted practice or the habits and traditions of the present day.
[00:24:47] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
One of his Foreign Relations Committee staff members remembers picking up the phone during his first week on the job and was startled to hear the chairman on the other end of the line demand, “Well, have you got any ideas?” The poor man was completely tongue-tied until he finally realized that new ideas were exactly what the chairman wanted, new, untried, unthinkable, even outrageous ideas. In 1964, Fulbright put it this way, “We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.
We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent.” must dare to think about unthinkable things because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and actions become mindless. Now, one of the thoughts many of his colleagues considered unthinkable was the International Education Exchange Program that bears his name.
It was during the Second World War when Fulbright, as was his habit, was trying to get to the root cause of the conflict. Now, why in the world was the world at war for the second time in less than two generations? After a good deal of thought and study, he came to the conclusion that it was simply because we, the people of the world, did not know each other.
We needed to spend meaningful amounts of time together in each other’s countries, getting to know differing modes of thought and communication, differing ways of interacting socially, better ways of resolving differences among ourselves and solving problems. Unthinkable thoughts, however, does not mean hasty or un-thought through actions on the part of the democracy’s leadership. On the contrary, leadership requires the ability to find tried-and-true ways and means to open the eyes of the populous and expand their horizons, the ability to elevate the whole community’s critical thinking skills and sense of responsibility so as to feel comfortable with and flourish under that which is the great universal golden ring to societies around the globe, namely freedom, which he described in this way: If ever a universal victory for democratic values comes within reach, it will come, I believe, not through acts of foreign policy, and certainly not through military policy, but rather through the magnetism of freedom itself.
The prospects for freedom depend ultimately on how it is practiced in free societies. Now, Fulbright went on to say what, that whenever he could, that in order to ensure prosperity for all members of a free country, those who live in a democracy must be educated, and educated broadly, both in their own and in other countries. His most famous piece of legislation has extended an educational experience beyond national borders for scholars from over 155 different countries around the world.
That was based, as you can see, on his own firsthand experience as a Rhodes Scholar, and proposed out of a sense of urgency derived from the certain knowledge that the atomic bomb spelled the end of the human race completely should there ever be another world war.
[00:29:54] GEORGE BRESLAUER:
Fulbright knew that the majority of his colleagues would not approve of any money spent on such an idea, so the first bill he sent through the Senate outlined an international education exchange program, but made no mention of money needed to make it a reality. As a result, that bill passed easily without any argument. Why should anybody worry about it?
Once that was accomplished, he then very nervously searched for a way to pay for it, but did not have to wait long for an answer. Within weeks, coming through the Senate was a proposal to sell to Europe all the war materials left unused all over the continent after the fighting stopped. The U.S. no longer needed them, and war-torn Europe certainly could put them to good use.
Fulbright studied the bill and thought, “Aha.” So he added at the bottom one sentence: “The proceeds from these goods shall be limited in use to underwrite the International Education Exchange Program.” He sent the bill on without comment, and nobody really read it.
It passed easily.
(audience laughing)
This assured the birth of the International Education Exchange Program which bears his name. Six months later, one of his colleagues came over to him and shook his finger in his face and yelled, “Young man, don’t you realize how dangerous it is to expose our fine young girls and boys to those terrible foreign isms?” Clearly he didn’t.
This international education program, which bears his name, has opened the eyes and minds of not only students around the world, but professors and those in needs of special technical training, unavailable in their countries. In its whole existence, it has cost the American taxpayer less than a week of our defense program at the present time. And despite the relatively small financial outlie, it is recognized as one of the strongest forces for peace on the planet thanks to its role in spreading and deepening a real understanding of differing cultures throughout the world.
As Fulbright put it in his usual succinct way, “Education is a slow-moving but powerful force. It may not be fast enough or strong enough to save us from catastrophe, but it is the strongest force available.” The success of the International Education Exchange Program around the world is now clear.
Not only do countless thousands of students declare that their studies in a different country fundamentally change their understanding of their world and their outlook on it, their aspirations, and therefore their lives, but more people than I could possibly count have told me that they met their spouses while on the program, thus deepening even more the will to keep the peace worldwide. This has some saying that Fulbright’s second role in life is that of Cupid. Education exchange has been proven to be the best and possibly the only means by which nations can cultivate a degree of objectivity about each other’s behavior and intentions.
It is the means by which very different societies can come to understand each other’s common aspirations and how the satisfactions of everyday life may be achieved. And it is certainly my honor to make sure that it keeps on going. Thank you.
(applause)
(applause)
[00:35:21] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Thank you.
[00:35:21] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
We’re gonna move to the chairs.
[00:35:23] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Do you care which seat I sit in?
[00:35:25] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Nah, this one is fine.
[00:35:26] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
This one, okay.
[00:35:30] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
So, we are now going to move to the question and answer part of this program. I would encourage you, please, to avail yourselves of the microphone and would ask that your questions indeed be questions. That’s important to keep the conversation flowing.
Perhaps I can begin with a question myself. And that would be, the present climate in Washington is one that features a lot of constraint–
[00:36:01] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Correct.
[00:36:02] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Financially. And I wonder whether the international education exchange program has been a target of people who have more zeal to cut budgets than they do to promote international understanding?
[00:36:17] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
As far as I know, the Fulbright Program, to my surprise, has not been singled out in to a, as something that should be eliminated. So I think even those who forced the shutdown of the government perhaps, they thought it was too small but they certainly did not single it out as one of the, their main objections.
[00:36:47] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Do you think that there’s any possibility for an exchange program that could possibly bridge the divide between the two parties in Washington?
(laughter)
[00:36:56] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
What a wonderful idea.
[00:36:57] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
And promote greater understanding and harmony.
[00:37:00] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Congress itself is supposed to be that setting where they settle their differences. And in the past you know, a great deal of that work was done right in the halls of Congress. Certainly, my husband worked very hard to make friends across the aisle and to even invite them to his home, and to try to also treat some of their complaints with comedy.
I think I mentioned to you earlier at one point when one of them was ranting and raving about commies and how dreadful they are and, “Why can’t the government do more about them?” The senator, they were sitting together in a, I don’t know, a room, and he looked at him and said, “Commies? Commies here?”
And he started getting up and he looked under the furniture and said, “Commies, where are they?” And of course, the man felt very foolish and started laughing. And you know, that then allowed him to speak about, you know, communism in more, much more realistic terms, and bring the level of this shrill conversation.
He did that all the time.
[00:38:33] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Now, we had lunch today, actually, a very nice luncheon with a number of faculty members and staff members of the university, who were telling us about their experiences abroad with the Fulbright Program, one aspect or another. And I found myself thinking about your own international experiences. How have those shaped your view of the value of this kind of exchange?
[00:38:58] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Well, mine started really very early. My father, who adored Fulbright once he met him was an international businessman who believed very firmly in, in learning early and, and a lot about differing societies. And so, at the age of 15, he sent me to stay with friends of his who were Colombian and residents of the country of Colombia.
And for three months, I not only stayed there, I had two years of Spanish, so I had a sort of beginning smattering of the language. And they, as soon as I got to Colombia I entered in the
(speaking in Spanish)
And it was an amazing experience because once I, you can imagine, I studied massively hard to rapidly increase my– And even after I could speak Spanish and, understand and interact the beginning of every class there, began with every student in this fashion. And I still, even after learning the language, did not do that. And so finally, one of them came up to me and said, “You know, why?
You are understanding us. Why?” And I said, “Because.”
And I said in Spanish, “I’m Protestant. I’m not Catholic.” And their eyes got this big.
And they said, “Oh, do you believe in God?” And that began a whole series of conversations, which I hasten to add showed my ignorance of them as much as their ignorance of the U.S. And it was an amazing summer.
And that certainly, if anything, could have convinced me of the need for not just travel. If it’s Tuesday, “Gee, this must be Belgium. Where do we go from here?
What country?” The really in-depth knowledge and interaction was vital in this present-day world.
[00:41:29] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I would again invite my colleagues in the audience to come and avail yourself of the microphone, if you have a question. In the story that you just told, vivid in that experience was your struggle with the language.
[00:41:43] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Yes.
[00:41:44] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
And I wonder how you feel about the current trend internationally for universities abroad to offer instruction in English, even if that’s not the language of the country.
[00:41:56] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Well, I think that’s sad. I think that, we– unfortunately, English has, if there is an international language these days, it is English, and we get spoiled because we can speak English in places, in far more places, than in countries that whose language is English. And I think that makes us lazy, and I think that’s too bad.
[00:42:26] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
We have a brave first question. Thank you so much for coming to speak with us today.
[00:42:31] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Delighted.
[00:42:32] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
One question I had for you. There’s been so many Fulbright scholars over the years, whether as students or as professors, and I wondered do a few stick out to you as using their experience to really jumpstart their career in something that really stuck out to you as memorable or important in the field of international diplomacy?
[00:42:51] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
What was the memo stuck out?
[00:42:54] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
The careers that they pursued after their Fulbright, if it was influenced in some way by what they learned during their time.
[00:43:00] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
I think it’s not so much the type of career, whether you were a doctor or a lawyer, or you know, a government worker or whatever, but the manner in which you deal with that career, your outlook. That’s what I think has been the fundamental benefit of the Fulbright program, because having forced a student or a professor to stay in a country long enough to have to find out why they have these different beliefs, why they’re expressing things in a way that they’re unfamiliar with makes you more sensitive to not only the reasons for differences, but how to deal with them without either dislike or unreasonable argument.
[00:43:59] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you, thank you. Was a part of your question also about the way in which people capitalized on contacts made abroad and turned those relationships into something even more meaningful? Yes.
Is that part of your question? How people have through, through engagement with the Fulbright program. Made contacts abroad and capitalized on those contacts and turned them into something even more meaningful?
[00:44:29] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
I guess, I think that’s very true, because once they came back from their Fulbright, they certainly looked at their profession and what they did with it in very different ways, even though it was the same. Profession they looked at it in very different ways. My own children did not have Fulbrights, but my youngest child certainly spent a whole semester in Mexico, and she is a very definite young lady.
I mean, she’s a real lawyer. But it changed her so that she listens a great deal more, and so that she tries harder to understand get at problems in different ways so that the understanding can be arrived at.
[00:45:30] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you. Thank you for your question. Now, if you were to apply to study abroad somewhere, yourself now, where would you apply to go and why?
[00:45:42] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
That’s a fascinating question.
[00:45:44] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I think we lost the microphone here.
[00:45:47] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Did this?
[00:45:48] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Yes, it’s back, thank you.
[00:45:49] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Oh, there it is now. Gosh, I’m not sure. That’s very interesting question because I have lived all over the world, and I have spent two years in Korea and in Germany, and obviously in Colombia. I’ve spent a year in England. And so, I’m not sure where I’d really wanna go to study.
[00:46:27] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Would you make that choice on the basis of the place where you felt you needed to learn most, or where you felt you needed most to be an ambassador?
[00:46:38] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
That’s a wonderful question, and I think I would choose the latter, because I think there are still parts of the world which are very much isolated from our way of life, and our history, and even our current events, and need to know more about it so that they can even ask, they don’t even ask questions. They just, you know abolish the idea. And I would like to change that.
[00:47:17] GEORGE BRESLAUER:
Good luck.
[00:47:18] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Yes.
[00:47:18] GEORGE BRESLAUER:
We have a second question.
[00:47:20] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Well, I have two rather minor curiosity questions. One, I don’t remember which year the Fulbright was first given, the first year that someone received one. And also I was wondering what year did the Senator pass away?
[00:47:36] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Okay. The first part of that question is that the program turned into law, I think it was in 1946. And I know that the first students went from both shores. They went both East and West in 1948. And so that was the beginning of the program. And my husband passed away in 1995.
[00:48:09] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Fulbright. The Fulbright Scholarship has supported so many musicians over the decades in their studies.
And part of my dissertation concerns the effect of the Fulbright Scholarship on the construction of musical instruments, particularly pipe organs in the 1950s and ’60s, thanks to returning Fulbright scholars from the Netherlands. I’m curious as to whether William Fulbright had any particular interest in music or if music has just been one of the many beneficiaries of the program?
[00:48:42] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Music has been one of the many beneficiaries of the program. And there have been numerous, the results of international organiz, not just so much organizations, but international interchange that we have been maintained after a Fulbrighter has either come here or gone overseas. And, and lots of organ, probably small organizations, but have been formed as a result of the Fulbright Program, that maintain this constant interchange, which keeps up and deepens the understanding that was first begun as a Fulbrighter.
[00:49:40] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you very much for your talk. I was wondering I am a Fulbright grantee, so it doesn’t really apply to me, but what do you see as the challenges for the future? Because I can imagine, like, actually, if I want to, I can follow a course in China without any problems.
I mean, communication is very easy. So, it’s a different setting than before in the ’40s or the ’50s, where people had to travel by boat, et cetera. So, how do you see that globalization that is already going on, how does it affect the Fulbright Program?
And what direction is it take, are there any changes on the policy, then?
[00:50:16] ANDREW SZERI:
And excuse me, was it a part of your question something to do with the internet and the ease of–
[00:50:22] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Yeah.
[00:50:23] ANDREW SZERI:
Interactions through the internet?
[00:50:24] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
My question is, so Fulbright, it’s being geographically somewhere else for a long period.
[00:50:29] ANDREW SZERI:
Yeah.
[00:50:29] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
But like, the incentive to go somewhere else to study, it has gone because you can follow the courses over the internet anyway, so I’m not sure whether you–
[00:50:39] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Well, I think people realize, people who have traveled or who have talked to Fulbrighters realize that, yes, the internet has certainly made a big difference, but there is nothing, I mean, it’s like looking through a keyhole at something as opposed to opening the door and going out and becoming part of the scene. Those are two very different things. The keyhole shows you, it shows you something, but nothing like the whole view.
[00:51:15] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Okay. Thank you. Hi.
Thank you for speaking again. So my question is kind of related to that, in that, I wanna know if you believe there are any shortcomings of the program or any aspects of the program that needs to be changed to accommodate the evolving world or just the way that the world is set up now?
[00:51:37] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
That’s a wonderful, wonderful question. And I sort of preface the question with the fact that both my husband when he was alive, and I make very clear that we have nothing to do with the, either the management or the decisions or anything about the program, because as I’ve said earlier, uh, you know, we felt like the gorillas sitting in the corner.
[00:52:11] ANDREW SZERI:
And furthermore, we didn’t want to dampen anybody’s, you know, suggestions, and willingness to figure out what could be done. I feel that I wish the program were bigger in numbers, and furthermore, I think that it should be not only the professors who teach subjects and the students, but those people who administer colleges, for instance. There should be a wider view of people who can be very much a part of the program, because these people are also influential and need to have their eyes widened.
[00:53:07] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for being with us.
This is my second experience as a Fulbrighter. I spent as a graduate student, and I’m now teaching at Berkeley. And one of the things that Fulbright gave us was one of the things that kind of created bonds with my Fulbright friends today and even before, of years before, a love for different kinds of food, cuisine.
I mean, we’ve shared, I remember my Russian Fulbright friends completely drove me crazy about curry and tandoori and everything else. And this, and I paid them a return favor by asking them about borscht and everything else. So we’ve had these, this goes on even now.
So I was wondering, and this is, I mean, this is something that I’ve always thought about, and it’s that if you’ve, if Senator Fulbright also shared a similar passion for cuisine and everything, I mean, it’s of course not as easily available. And I’ve been responsible for telling them that Indian cooking does not only mean tandoori chicken. So that’s always been important.
So that was something that I really wanted to know.
[00:54:20] ANDREW SZERI:
Well, that’s a wonderful example of the things that if you go to a country, you would learn a great deal more and not have this myopic view of food, and food’s very important. So that is a wonderful question.
[00:54:36] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
And again, it makes me wish that the program, perhaps not so much has changed, but just got bigger with it, we could send double, triple the number of Fulbrights, people on Fulbright scholarships. I think it would make a big difference. Thank you.
Hello, good afternoon. I was wondering if I can ask you a question. Before I ask the question, I found your reference to this notion of the communists very amusing, because beyond its political implications, which is of course something outdated and obsolete, there are no more communists invading America.
There’s a sense in which I think despite the fact that the Fulbright program has been very successful, there is still resistance in the United States, not in the part of individual scholars, but the university system, to receiving or being receptive to university systems from outside the United States, in particular as it regards continental European ideas. The Americans seem to have this sort of love-hate relationship to that which comes from countries like France, where I’m educated, for example. And then I was just wondering,to the point that I simply have to remind Americans referring, sometimes my American friends referring to the, to the work of David McCullough that university education was not invented in the United States.
I was just wondering if you can tell me, despite in your view, how much this program has been successful, despite its individual successes in terms of opening the horizons of its individual beneficiaries, in terms of reforming the American academic system, opening it up, making it more receptive, and making it distance itself from some of this unfortunate, in my view, ideological pretensions to superiority. I totally understand what you’re saying. In what sense do you think that has been successful?
I’d be grateful if you address that question. Thank you. That’s a wonderful question.
And I do feel that if we could only really increase the number of Fulbrights, I mean, at this point, I think for every one Fulbright scholarship, there are close to 10 people who have tried to apply. And that does not mean that nine of them are not worthy. That’s nonsense.
I would think that the majority of them were worthy of the scholarship. And if the majority of them had been able to go and see that half the things that they believed were either distorted or not true at all.
[00:57:10] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
And then we wouldn’t be this knot of people that was up here. We would be far more widespread, and I think that would make a big difference.
[00:57:20] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Hence your desire for expanding the program. Am I correct? Thank you very much.
[00:57:24] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Yes.
[00:57:24] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Thank you. This brings to my mind a question, the last couple of questions bring to my mind a question about the political sensitivities of the countries where Fulbright people go or, come from. And I wonder, especially given the time when the program was set up in the late 1940s and the recent nature of the war with enemies to the east and to the west.
Were there any serious misgivings on the part of your husband’s colleagues in the Senate, for example, about, let’s say, having people go to Germany or, or to Japan, we had so recently fought?
[00:58:15] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
I think that actually the number who, certainly the number of Japanese and Germans who wanted to come here under Fulbrights was, was enormous. And I certainly know that a lot of attitudes were softened, if not really changed as a direct result of their entering our both academic system, whether as a teacher or as a student or students going to those countries. And a lot of people, especially, went to Germany.
And I think not so many went to Japan simply because the language was even more foreign.
[00:59:07] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Very, much more difficult, yes.
[00:59:09] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Yeah.
[00:59:09] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
And I wondered the same could be said about the Cold War, for example. Were there efforts, for example, to restrict the number of people coming from, the Soviet Union or going to the Soviet Union during the Cold War?
[00:59:28] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
I think that there’s been a love-hate situation in that whole area. In that whole area. And furthermore, a lot of people who, as far as the Soviet Union goes, a tremendous number of people wanted to come from the Soviet Union, and it was their government that stopped them cold, not ours.
Because they were totally afraid of the, you know, their eyes would be opened to the fact that the majority of what they were saying about us was completely false. And having lived in the Soviet Union, and I did live in the Soviet Union for a couple of years, they were terrified of that. I had two people follow me 24 hours a day because I did speak Russian.
I made a point of learning Russian before I went. And when I got there, I was never left alone and in many cases, they had ways of discouraging people from talking to me. But they didn’t succeed all together.
And there was one time when, I traveled to save my sanity. And there was one time when I went to Tashkent and the morning I arrived, I said, “I’d like to go visit a school.” Because I was a teacher.
And they made me sit down and they were going to ignore me, I’m sure for the whole day. But after 15 minutes, I said, “I am determined to stand here and make your life miserable until you give me the name of a school.” And so, they, in fury, threw me the name of a school, which luckily was very close by.
And when I went, of course, the school had no idea that I was coming. And I attended classes and in the, when the classes broke up and the teachers all gathered around and we compared notes, which was fascinating because the teaching methods were so different. They asked me how, how I taught certain classes in terms, especially in terms of English composition and so forth.
I would often break up my classes in groups and have them work together. And the teachers there, they kept their classes lock stepped together. And everybody had to learn at the same pace and the same time and no questions asked.
Discussion periods, minimal. This was just, I’m imparting to you what you know and I don’t want any questions.
And, of course, I was always asking for questions. And good teachers always ask for questions. So that was a, just a totally fascinating conversation to such an extent that I left there mid-afternoon and thanked them profusely, loved being at your school.
Really enjoyed talking to your teachers. And immediately, the student teachers who were there, they began, they had begun to figure out who I was. So they went rushing to the headmaster and they said, “We can’t let this lady just leave and go back by herself.
Then we will be rude. We have to accompany her back to her hotel.” And the headmaster thought, ‘Oh, yeah,
That’s nice of you. Yes, go ahead.’ So this whole troop of student teachers went out to the sidewalk with me and just as we got out and to the curb, they said, ‘Where do you really want to go?’
(audience laughing)
And so of course I said, where you wanna show me. Well, we were out until 10 o’clock at night. And it was fascinating with discussions and, you know, showing me places in the city that I never would’ve seen on a tour.
And finally, we ended up in the dorm room of one of the students. And he rummaged around in his drawers and he pulled out this really wrinkled, practically tattered magazine and guess what it was? Time Magazine.
How he got ahold of that, I don’t know.
[01:04:30] GUEST:
But he shuffled and he smoothed out one of the pages and he said, “Do you see that picture?” And it was a picture of an apartment building. And I said, yeah.
It was an American apartment building. And he said, ‘Do you see what the label is under there?’ And it said, slums.
And I said, “Oh.” And he said, “We look at that building and we think that looks like a really nice building. And in your country, that’s slums?
What else are they lying to us about?” And I thought, “This is the end of this regime.” At one point.
This is not gonna last.
(all laughing)
[01:05:11] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Please. Hi, hello. I was just wondering whether you think that a generalized educational system would be one that you and your program would strive towards?
So where you have one type of educational system, so the Fulbright’s community sort of fuses, you know, the American educational system with Europe’s and with Asian and it’ll make things easier because we’d understand each other because we’d come from the same background. But at the same time, you’d be going towards sort of a more globalized community which may be seen as losing particularities in culture. And I was also wondering, you guys have tried, because I feel like North Korea is a country that I know very little about, I feel like it’s one of the countries that most of the rest of the world knows very little about, and whether the Fulbright Program has tried, whether you had any experiences in having exchange programs there.
[01:06:20] GUEST:
That’s a, I’ll start with the latter part of that, because North Korea would not in, it would not in a million years allow somebody from this country to cross the border. I lived in Korea, but obviously South Korea for two years, and that border is impenetrable because I think the North Koreans realize that if any group, whether it be Fulbrighters or anybody else from the free world were allowed in there for any period of time, that their government would be in grave danger. They are successful for as long as they are because they are so impenetrable.
And I, I mean, when I was in South Korea, I, I know that there were escapes from North Korea, but they were always by water. They would leave the North Korean shores and then they would come to South Korea. And we heard about the incredible dictatorship that was up there, and the refusal to allow any kind of information or people into that country.
It was, I think eventually it will fail, because how can they keep that up forever? And I know that they were very poor. There were students who came, who fled and got into South Korea who said that the only way they could study at night was to go outside, even in the winter, and study under the streetlights because they had no light in their homes, or in their, in their dorms.
[01:08:12] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I think the first part of that question about generalized education was about something like an international baccalaureate.
[01:08:19] GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
[01:08:20] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
And, and the question was, has the Fulbright Program ever thought to try to bring some sort of generalized education into being in that country?
[01:08:30] GUEST:
It, I think that would be really hard because as I’m sure you are all aware, even from K through 12, the types of classroom work and education, even within one state, is vastly different. It’s not just private versus public. It is you know, county by county it can be a very different education.
And our educational system is by no stretch of the imagination uniform, that’s hard.
[01:09:08] INTERVIEWER:
If you were to create a baccalaureate, would you stress more a generalized education like in America where you start off being free to choose whatever you do at first, and, but at the stake of more standardized testing?
[01:09:26] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Or would you have specialization already like in Europe, you already start with a major from the first year?
[01:09:37] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
I think that it would be really hard to create an education system here where it was uniform. Don’t you agree? I mean, I really fundamental disagreements about what education should be about is, continues to this day, and I’m sure will keep on going.
[01:10:05] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
You would have to fight against everybody’s idea about what’s best for their own children.
[01:10:10] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Exactly.
[01:10:11] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Which is a powerful force, I think.
[01:10:13] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Yeah. And what’s most important to learn and how to learn it. There are tremendous differences in those forces, and I don’t see any way of overcoming those differences to, I mean, obviously there are certain real fundamentals, but those are few and far between compared to the differences in educational systems.
[01:10:40] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Well, let me suggest that we should draw to a close the question and answer part of the program. I would like to thank everyone for the questions. I thought they were very stimulating. Sometimes tasty.
(laughing)
But certainly very stimulating. And I would like to ask the audience to join me in thanking Mrs. Fulbright.
[01:11:00] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.
(applause)
Thank you.
[01:11:11] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I will as well. No, you should stay seated.
[01:11:16] HARRIET FULBRIGHT:
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
(applause)
[01:11:23] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Now, we are not quite finished yet. If you’d take your seats, please. We have some closing remarks from our Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and Professor of Political Science, George Breslauer, who may like to pick up the theme of Tashkent.
George, if you are so inclined, as you are an expert on those matters.
[01:11:45] GEORGE BRESLAUER:
Nope, that would be too extemporaneous. Push. But I will say.
(speaking foreign language)
[01:11:56] ANDREW SZERI:
I do want to, on behalf of the chancellor and the university thank, again, Esther Ma and Harvey Li for their generous philanthropy toward this program. I’m honored to be sharing the stage with Mrs. Harriet Fulbright. I’ve been asked to say a few things about internationalism and internationalization at UC Berkeley.
I won’t get into the differences between the US higher educational system and the European, though I’ll be happy if the gentleman is there to talk about that during the reception. But I would say that UC Berkeley prides itself on having, for a very, very long time, been highly internationalized at both the student and the faculty levels. And when you look for not a geopolitical rationale for that, which you spoke about in terms of fostering peace but the pedagogical rationale at the university level, I think there have really been two driving ideas behind that.
One is that you really can’t understand your culture, your own culture, unless you understand other cultures in their juxtaposition. Because the tendency when you’re brought up in a given culture is to not know the difference between that which is particular and that which is general. And you assume certain things are just natural or universal until you see other cultures doing it differently.
And that, I think, is a transformative experience. And another drive behind our commitment to internationalization is, is somewhat more recent, but but powerful, and that is the realization that the students who graduate from Berkeley, as with the students from many or most universities in the United States, are entering a world in which they are going to be interacting globally, whatever they are doing. At least a large majority of them will be.
And if they’re not prepared for such interaction by understanding communication, understanding foreign cultures, and so on they’re not gonna be successful at whatever they’re attempting to do. You might ask, how internationalized are we? Well, more than 50% of our faculty conduct research either on a foreign area or in collaboration with a scholar abroad. That’s about 800 out of 1500 faculty.
Who do that? We had been internationalized for many decades, but there has been a real increase of the thrust in the last seven or eight years. And let me give you some examples.
There’s been a 50% increase in the last six, seven years in the number of visiting scholars and post-doctoral fellows at UC Berkeley, whom they now number on an annual basis about 3,000. We have tripled the number of international students in our undergraduate student body, and more than doubled the number of international students who attend our summer session courses. We have tasked the Dean of Education Abroad to triple the number of our undergraduates who spend a summer, a semester, or a year studying or serving as interns abroad.
Tourism doesn’t count. We teach about 60 foreign languages and have invested heavily in sustaining the availability of low enrollment languages, and in ensuring that those who want to study foreign languages here will not be blocked out for lack of seats. We’ve invested in the last three, four years millions of dollars toward that end.
We’ve established a global engagement office to facilitate the maintenance and expansion of contacts and relationships with institutions abroad. We are planning now for the opening of offices abroad that we’ll call, we think of as sort of consulates that will facilitate on-site relationships for our students, faculty, and alumni abroad. We have recently proliferated operational partnerships, that is to say, institutional relationships, not just activities, but operational partnerships with universities and research institutions abroad, especially France, Norway, Germany, China, Singapore, Philippines, and Taiwan.
Many professional schools at Berkeley have, in recent years, begun on-site training programs, that is to say on-site here, for delegations from countries throughout the world, executive education, legislature education, and so on. And, of course, online education, while it is looking through a keyhole, is better than nothing. And so the use of, or the development of MOOCs to be able to project internationally, we consider to be a noble act making that kind of exposure to education available to those who otherwise might never have had it.
And this actually began, oh, at least a decade ago, before MOOCs, before the online revolution took off. And here, I’m thinking of webcasting. We have a physics professor here who taught an acclaimed course called Physics for Future Presidents.
That’s basically a way of saying physics for non-majors.
(audience laughter)
And he webcast that, put it out on the web. And one year, he received a postcard from a soldier in Iraq, who said, “Watching your lectures each night is the only thing that keeps me sane over here.”
[01:18:02] AUDIENCE MEMBER:
Oh, my God.
[01:18:03] ANDREW SZERI:
Which was very, very gratifying. So, as we continue our efforts at internationalization we look back upon and we honor the transformative impact of the Fulbright Program in showing us the way toward facilitating exchanges in both directions, and of students and of faculty. And we thank you for the role you played in that.
Thank you.
(applause)
