“You are the diplomats moving forward,” said Ambassador Costos to Fulbright Fellows.
“You are the diplomats moving forward, you will take the torch from this country and bring it home and share the wonderful things you have learned about this country”. Ambassador Costos addressed these words on June 6 to the group of US Fulbright scholars gathered at the International Institute in the farewell ceremony of this “class” of Fulbrighters. Previously, Kate Byrnes, Counselor for Public Diplomacy of the US Embassy and Co-Chair of the US-Spain Fulbright Commission, emphasizing the value and importance of educational exchanges, had quoted the words of the Senator J. William Fulbright and which we reproduce below:
“I have thought of everything I can think of, and the one thing that gives me some hope is the ethos that underlies the educational exchange program. That ethos, in sum, is the belief that international relations can be improved, and the danger of war significantly reduced, by producing generations of leaders, especially in the big counties, who through the experience of educational exchange, will have acquired some feeling and understanding of other peoples' cultures–why they operate as they do, why they think as they do, why they react as they do–and of the differences among these cultures. It is possible–not very likely, but possible–that people can find in themselves, through intercultural education, the ways and means of living together in peace.”
After initial interventions by Margery Resnick, President of the International Institute and Alberto López, Executive Director of the Fulbright Commission, Kate Byrnes took the floor, followed by the US Ambassador to Spain and Andorra, Mr. James Costos . The event continued with a conference by Charles Powell, Director of the Elcano Royal Institute, “Whither Spain”.
The International Institute maintains a long collaboration with the Fulbright Commission in Spain. Traditionally, orientation sessions for Spanish scholarship holders are organized at the Institute at the end of June, and in September, it welcomes North American scholarship holders. Throughout the more than fifty years of existence of the Fulbright program in Spain, the Institute has supported its work in different ways. Perhaps the most well-remembered joint initiative is the series of “Fulbright luncheons” that, starting in 1983 and at the request of the director of the Institute, Prof. Edmund King of Princeton University, were organized for almost twenty years.
Since the XNUMXs, the Institute, together with the Fulbright Commission, has been offering three partial Ruth Lee Kennedy scholarships for Spanish university women who wish to further their studies in the United States.
More information: https://www.iie.es/sec1/sec_1_becas.html
