Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board Resigns As Trump Admin Roots Out Bias
The entire Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board has resigned in protest of President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping crackdown on the foreign student pipeline — a system long plagued by lax oversight, ideological capture, and mounting national-security threats.
In a mass resignation letter released this week, all twelve members of the congressionally mandated board announced they were stepping down rather than support Trump’s effort to reform what critics say has become a taxpayer-funded gateway for foreign influence operations inside American universities.
“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 letter claimed that Fulbright administrators have historically complied with federal law “under Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” insisting the program has always operated “with independence pursuant to its statutory mandate.”
“Under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the Board has followed the law, operating with independence pursuant to its statutory mandate. Indeed, the Fulbright-Hays Act emphasizes the non-political and non-ideological character of the program,” the board continued.
But the members asserted that Trump’s second-term reforms — aimed at curbing foreign infiltration and reinforcing U.S. national-security vetting — went “too far.”
“However, the current administration has usurped the authority of the Board and denied Fulbright awards to a substantial number of individuals who were selected for the 2025–2026 academic year. The administration is also currently subjecting an additional 1,200 foreign Fulbright recipients to an unauthorized review process and could reject more,” they said.
The board further accused the administration of violating the Fulbright mission itself.
The Trump administration’s review, they argued, “not only contradict the statute but are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute.”
They also claimed that repeated warnings were ignored.
“We have raised these legal issues and our strong objections with senior administration officials on multiple occasions, including in writing,” the board said. “It is our sincere hope that Congress, the courts, and future Fulbright Boards will prevent the administration’s efforts to degrade, dismantle, or even eliminate one of our nation’s most respected and valuable programs. Injecting politics and ideological mandates into the Fulbright program violates the letter and spirit of the law that Congress so wisely established nearly eight decades ago.”
But Trump officials say the opposite is true — that Fulbright, once a respected academic exchange program, has become a national-security liability exploited by hostile governments, especially China.
Those concerns gained significant traction following a recent case involving Chengxuan Han, a Chinese national caught attempting to smuggle biological materials into the U.S. from a Wuhan-based science and technology university.
“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.
“The FBI has zero tolerance for those who violate federal law and remains unwavering in our mission to protect the American people,” said Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office. “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.”
The University of Michigan had brought Han in as a visiting scholar — a textbook example, officials say, of academic programs granting access to foreign nationals with privileged entry points into sensitive research environments.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Han shipped multiple packages to the United States. One was addressed to a working lab member; another was sent to a university staff or faculty member. In a court filing, Han admitted she was sending “nematode growth medium (NGM) (in the petri dishes) and plasmids (in the envelope).”
The case comes on the heels of a sweeping exposé from the Stanford Review, which reported last month on what it described as an extensive Chinese espionage network operating in and around Stanford University.
“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 paper reported.
For the Trump administration, these incidents underscore why programs like Fulbright can no longer operate as they did during an era of bipartisan naïveté about foreign influence. With China aggressively targeting U.S. research, academia, and technology, the White House argues that academic exchanges must be subject to strict national-security review — not run as self-policing institutions immune from oversight.
The mass resignation of Fulbright board members may have been intended as a rebuke of President Trump. In reality, it highlights exactly why these programs require tighter scrutiny: entrenched bureaucrats protesting the very oversight that Congress and national-security officials say is long overdue.