All twelve members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board abruptly resigned this week in protest of President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping reforms to the foreign student system, which his administration has long warned is riddled with abuse, fraud, and threats to U.S. national security.

In a lengthy resignation letter, the board blasted Trump’s efforts to rein in the increasingly politicized and compromised Fulbright Program — a program that, while once rooted in academic excellence, has in recent years served as a backdoor pipeline for ideological indoctrination, espionage, and foreign influence.

“Effective immediately, members of the Congressionally mandated Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board voted overwhelmingly to resign from the board, rather than endorse unprecedented actions that we believe are impermissible under the law, compromise U.S. national interests and integrity, and undermine the mission and mandates Congress established for the Fulbright program nearly 80 years ago,” the board wrote.

The board accused the Trump administration of denying awards to a significant number of foreign applicants and subjecting over 1,200 additional recipients to an internal review process — a process they claim has no statutory basis.

But Trump officials argue the review is not only justified — it’s long overdue.

The administration has emphasized that national security takes precedence over elite academia’s globalist vision. The Fulbright program, originally designed to promote educational exchange, has been infiltrated by hostile foreign actors, many with ties to foreign governments or military institutions — particularly from the Chinese Communist Party.

“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by this alien from a science and technology university in Wuhan, China — to be used at a University of Michigan laboratory — is part of an alarming pattern that threatens our security,” said U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. this week.

The case involves Chengxuan Han, a Chinese national who was brought in as a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan. Han has now been charged in a federal case involving the unauthorized importation of biological materials into the U.S., including nematode growth medium and plasmids, which she admitted sending in petri dishes and envelopes from China.

“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by Chengxuan Han is a direct threat to public safety and national security, and it severely compromises the integrity of our nation’s research institutions,” said FBI Special Agent Cheyvoryea Gibson, who confirmed the bureau is treating the incident with the utmost seriousness.

This comes on the heels of new reporting from the Stanford Review, which uncovered what it describes as a shadowy network of Chinese espionage activities on campus, shrouded by a culture of silence and over $64 million in undisclosed foreign funding.

“Transnational repression, $64 million in Chinese funding, and allegations of racial profiling have contributed to a pervasive culture of silence at Stanford and beyond,” the student publication reported.

In short, President Trump’s Fulbright reforms target exactly the kind of institutional rot and foreign interference that has gone unchecked for decades — often with the complicity or silence of academic elites and bureaucrats now protesting their loss of control.

The Fulbright Board’s resignation, far from a scandal, is the latest proof that Trump’s crackdown is hitting the right targets — the entrenched globalist class that has prioritized foreign influence, ideological gatekeeping, and political correctness over U.S. sovereignty, safety, and law.

As one administration official put it: “If the Fulbright program is being used as a Trojan horse for communist regimes and adversarial governments, it’s no longer an academic exchange — it’s a national security breach.”