Fulbright in a Time of Plague

My calendar tells me that today is the annual reception at my university to honor the Fulbright scholar exchange program and its grantees.

Cancelled, of course.

But I woke up thinking about the Fulbright exchange program--what it has given me and my family, the opportunities it has created for students and scholars all over the world.

It was April 2012 when I learned I was under consideration for the Distinguished Slavic Scholar position at the University of Warsaw, and we spent spring semester 2013 in Poland. Since then I've been back to Poland several times in spring, and I meet up with former students who are doing amazing things, stop by the Polish Fulbright Commission office to see what's new, share a meal with a friend from the American Studies Center. She has had formative intellectual and cultural experiences while in the U.S. on a Fulbright grant, and she regularly interacts with visitors from the U.S. to Poland. We were grateful to the American Studies Center during our semester in Poland for giving my husband--an American historian--a place to teach and to research. The folks we met there were amazing scholars, teachers, and human beings, and we cherished our time with them.

American Studies Center Library 

Indeed, the American Studies Center itself got its start thanks to an American on a Fulbright grant. Timothy Wiles helped set the Center up in 1975 and spent two years there as a Fulbrighter in the early 80s (under martial law, no less) with his wife Mary McGann. (See here for a reprinted version of their 1983 Christmas letter detailing that experience.) Mary was back in Warsaw when we arrived and offered us excellent advice -- which is what Fulbrighters do for each other.

Yours truly on the far right

International conversations are key to understanding the world we live in and what has shaped it. That's a banal and obvious thing to say. But how can I convey the privilege I feel to be a part of those conversations? This past May I was in Warsaw, where my visit to the Polish Fulbright Commission led to a Polish Slavic Scholar position for my own university in 2021! And in June I was invited to Rome for a Guarini Institute of Public Affairs event entitled "Europe 30 Years after 1989." Great event, with a panel of specialists on Hungary, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Romania. International travel, something we can only dream about these days, made it possible.

Caterina Preda, the political scientist from Romania -- who does comparative politics, Romania and Chile, how cool is that? -- was headed to the U.S. for a Fulbright at Texas this spring semester. Author of a book on aesthetic policy and totalitarianism, she was supposed to come visit us in Ohio in April. My students read her book. I got buy-in from folks across our campus and at our Newark campus. We were pretty excited to host her.

And then ... #koronawirus, as they say in Warsaw.

Thinking of what a wonderful semester Dr. Preda should have had -- with lectures and conferences planned across the U.S., plenty of research time at the UT library, trips to Houston and the hill country, conversations with colleagues, new food experiences -- and the semester she is having, holed up in a studio apartment with her family reading obsessively about coronavirus ... it's just tragic. My heart goes out to her, especially when I remember how our time in Poland changed the trajectory of my family's lives.

But still. The Fulbright website calls this a "temporary pause." Fulbright announcements for next year are happening, with many OSU scholars chosen to go teach and do collaborative research across the globe. Two students in whom I'm invested are semi-finalists and waiting to hear if they get to go study in Russia and Budapest. The calendar moves forward, and if nothing else, Dr. Preda is a Fulbright alum now, with all the connections that implies.

I can't wait for her to return to the U.S. at a time when we can actually host her at my university. And as for me -- I am dying to get back to Poland.