Fulbright board quits, claims Trump administration politicized scholarships

The full Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board resigned implicit what it said Wednesday was meddling by the Trump medication successful the board's authorization to grant scholarships.

The 12-member board, successful a statement, said the State Department, which runs the assistance program, had denied Fulbright awards "to a important fig of individuals who were selected for the 2025-2026 world year."

"The medication is besides presently subjecting an further 1,200 overseas Fulbright recipients to an unauthorized reappraisal process and could cull more," the committee said successful its statement, which was posted connected Substack, and archetypal reported by The New York Times.

"We judge these actions not lone contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright ngo and the values, including escaped code and world freedom, that Congress specified successful the statute," the committee said.

Jed Katz, the seat of the committee and managing manager of Javelin Venture Partners, referred CNBC to the connection erstwhile asked astir his and the different members' resignations.

Like each different subordinate of the board, Katz was appointed to the sheet by erstwhile President Joe Biden.

The different committee members who resign see radical who served successful Biden's administration, among them Mala Adiga, who was a lawman adjunct to Biden, erstwhile White House lawman main of unit Jen O'Malley Dillon, who chaired Kamala Harris' 2024 statesmanlike campaign, and erstwhile Biden speechwriter Vinay Reddy.

"Effective immediately, members of the Congressionally mandated Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board voted overwhelmingly to resign from the board, alternatively than endorse unprecedented actions that we judge are impermissible nether the law, compromise U.S. nationalist interests and integrity, and undermine the ngo and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright programme astir 80 years ago," the committee said successful its statement.

"At the program's inception, Congress intelligibly specified that the Fulbright Board has last support authorization of applicants, which occurs aft an exhaustive and deliberate, year-long process led by non-partisan vocation unit astatine the State Department and Embassies astir the world," the committee said.

A elder State Department official, successful a connection to CNBC, said, "The 12 members of the Fulbright Board were partisan governmental appointees of the Biden Administration."

"It's ridiculous to judge that these members would proceed to person last accidental implicit the exertion process, particularly erstwhile it comes to determining world suitability and alignment with President Trump's Executive Orders," the authoritative said.

"The assertion that the Fulbright Hayes Act affords exclusive and last accidental implicit Fulbright Applications to the Fulbright committee is false. This is thing but a governmental stunt attempting to undermine President Trump."