Academic Ambassadors, Pacific Allies: Australia, America and the Fulbright Program

Academic ambassadors, Pacific allies recounts the history of the Fulbright Program in Australia, locating academic exchange in the context of US cultural diplomacy and revealing a complex relationship between governments, publicly funded research and academic independence. 

The study traces the changing nature of the program over more than sixty years of Australia’s role as an ally of the US in the Asia-Pacific region. From its origins during post-war reconstruction and the early, defining years of the Cold War, and pre-dating other Australia-US treaties, the binational program jostled policy fluctuations, political and moral challenges posed by US and Australian military engagement in the Vietnam War, and the urgent realities of a declining public sector with associated funding cutbacks. The book shows how individual academics and program administrators worked to interpret the meaning of academic exchange for ‘mutual benefit’ across the decades. Gender differentiation in the administration and allocation of awards, scholars’ engagement in civil rights protests or gay rights activism, and the program’s influence on the emergence of new fields of academic enquiry are explored in detail. 

Posing critical questions and drawing on previously unexplored archives of the Fulbright Commission, relevant US and Australian government departments, and the reports and oral history of participating academics (Fulbright alumni), the study weaves institutional and individual experiences together with broader geopolitical issues. The result is a complex and nuanced analysis that, with its concentration on the particulars of the Australia-US relationship, brings fresh insights to current understandings of the global influence of the Fulbright Program. 

This study engages with the fields of US and Australian diplomatic history, including cultural diplomacy, education history, politics, Cold War, the war in Vietnam and the history of international philanthropic organisations and scholarly networks. It will also be of great interest to Fulbright alumni and personnel in participating countries around the world.