I received a Fulbright to study public nutrition in Germany
in 2011. That experience allowed me to learn another language, explore another
culture, and share my slice of America with another continent. I was one of
roughly 1,600 American scholars who receive funding each year.
I know several friends in other countries who hope to
receive Fulbright grants to study in the US and join 4,000 students from around
the world who aspire to benefit from our universities and develop skills that
can support their homelands and enrich the United States as well.
Foreign aid and diplomatic outreach are among the most
effective and worthy projects undertaken by our national government. It’s easy
to cut a bridge that doesn’t land in a constituent’s back yard, but those
bridges are what ennoble America and tie it to the aspirations of people around
the world.
If we become a guns and butter country, unwilling to lift
people towards their dreams because they weren’t born American, then we will
have failed the vision that we hold dear. Our city on a hill will loom, not
welcome; fester, not flourish.
We owe it to future generations to support a positive
American presence in the world. 8,000 people each year are brighter, wiser, and
stronger thanks to the support of the American government and a world’s worth
of partners.
The world isn’t ready for our light to go softly behind walls
of ignorance and insouciance. In this age of doubt, distrust, and despair,
connections made between different peoples are among the beacons of light that
keep our world aglow in possibilities for a better tomorrow.
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