The Harry S. Truman Federal Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of State, is pictured on October 8, 2024 in Washington, DC.
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The entire Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board resigned over what it said Wednesday was meddling by the Trump administration in the board’s authority to award scholarships.
The 12-member board, in a statement, said the State Department, which runs the scholarship program, had denied Fulbright awards “to a substantial number of individuals who were selected for the 2025-2026 academic year.”
“The administration is also currently subjecting an additional 1,200 foreign Fulbright recipients to an unauthorized review process and could reject more,” the board said in its statement, which was posted on Substack.
“We believe these actions not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute,” the board said.
Jed Katz, the chair of the board and managing director of Javelin Venture Partners, , referred CNBC to the statement when asked about his and the other members’ resignations.
Like every other member of the board, Katz was appointed to the panel by former President Joe Biden.
The other board members who resign include people who served in Biden’s administration, among them Mala Adiga, who was a deputy assistant to Biden, former White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, who chaired Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, and former Biden speechwriter Vinay Reddy.
CNBC has requested comment from the State Department.
The resignations were first reported by The New York Times.
“Effective immediately, members of the Congressionally mandated Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board voted overwhelmingly to resign from the board, rather than endorse unprecedented actions that we believe are impermissible under the law, compromise U.S. national interests and integrity, and undermine the mission and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago,” the board said in its statement.
“At the program’s inception, Congress clearly specified that the Fulbright Board has final approval authority of applicants, which occurs after an exhaustive and deliberate, year-long process led by non-partisan career staff at the State Department and Embassies around the world,” the board said.
