THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 13 From Interrogators to Students Abroad 50 Years Ago E mbassies should especially welcome congressional visitors. Washington is the congressman’s home turf, and his dealings with American diplomats have a different chemistry there than they do abroad. In Washington, the diplomat, figuratively, and often quite literally, looks up at a raised horseshoe of congressional interrogators. Abroad, the relationship alters. The congressman does not have to take an instant formal position on all that is said. He has come to learn, and it is the diplomat who knows. The good ones come as students with the raised-dais atmosphere totally absent. Temporarily separated from many of the burdens that harass them in Washington, they can devote themselves exclusively to the subject at hand as they often cannot at home. And while members of Congress rarely single out for special praise American diplomats they have first encountered in Washington, time and again they will speak well of a diplomatic official they have met abroad. —William B. Macomber, “The Diplomat and Congress,” in the October 1975 edition of The Foreign Service Journal. Also recognized this year is Veterinary Medical Officer Dr. Lydia Carpenter of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), who designed and implemented a program to protect the U.S. pork industry from African swine fever. Her initiative, which now covers more than 12,000 facilities across 36 states, brings together regulators, farmers, and producers to establish disease prevention and rapid response systems. The annual Sammies continue to spotlight public servants whose work often goes unseen but is vital to national security and public trust. Fulbright Board Resignations Eleven of the 12 members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board resigned en masse the week of June 12, citing unlawful political interference by the Trump administration in the scholar selection process. According to resignation letters and interviews, nearly 200 approved American Fulbright scholars were rejected by the State Department’s public diplomacy office based largely on their research topics, which included climate change, gender studies, migration, and public health. An additional 1,200 foreign grantees were subjected to an unauthorized review process. Former Congressman David Price, one of the resigning board members, said the political interference “grossly distorts” the Fulbright Program’s mission for the first time in its nearly 80-year history. “This is precisely what Senator Fulbright feared,” said Price in a PBS interview. “The board was created to protect academic freedom and to ensure that no administration could politicize the selection process. Trump appointees ignored that statutory safeguard.” The controversy centers on Trump appointee Darren Beattie, under secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department. Beattie and his team reportedly blocked grants on ideological grounds, with no response to objections raised by the board. The administration has further proposed slashing funding for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and eliminating Fulbright funding entirely in its upcoming budget. The State Department called the Fulbright board resignations a “political stunt,” claiming the board had no rightful final say in the selection process and needed to align with President Trump’s executive orders. However, the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 clearly outlines the board’s statutory authority over participant selection. This mandate has been repeatedly upheld across administrations for decades. With only one board member remaining, Fulbright’s future is uncertain. Price warned that the consequences are both immediate and longterm: “This program is a linchpin of U.S. soft power. Undermining its integrity damages our credibility abroad and compromises the goodwill built through decades of global academic exchange.” Applications for the 2026–2027 cycle remain open, but the status of current and future cohorts is now in flux. USAID Emergency Food Aid Destroyed The Trump administration has ordered the destruction of nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food originally purchased by USAID to feed malnourished children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The high-energy biscuits, which are valued at $800,000 and capable of feeding 1.5 million children for a week, will be incinerated at a cost of $130,000 to U.S. taxpayers.
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