The fulbright program, or the surplus value of officially organized academic exchange

Abstract

This paper will argue that the Fulbright Program can only add something substantial to what academic exchange normally does when it explicitly goes political. The surplus or added value of official American Studies depends on the way it is organized and programmed, as a command economy or as a negotiation economy and political rather than cultural. The first part of the paper provides some information about the context, history, and method of the Fulbright Program. It states that the program is primarily oriented towards Europe in order to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance and to culturally legitimize America s leading role in the alliance. Proportionally, the Netherlands was one of the most important nations of the program, not just because of its high-standing technical and natural sciences in militarily-strategically significant areas such as nuclear physics, but also because of its mediating role in the world of foreign diplomacy and scholarship. The second part of the paper deals with the transformation of the Fulbright Program in the Netherlands between 1947-1997. It shows that the first period of this time fully emphasized the science of education, whereas the second period focused on political science and political history. From 1985 onwards, a culturalised and depoliticised American Studies discipline has been dominating the scene. Re-politicisation of the Fulbright program in co-ordinated projects is pleaded for.