Fulbrights and Languages

When you apply for a Fulbright fellowship to study in a foreign country, you get points for knowing the language well. Unless you grew up speaking it, in which case you get no points in the language proficiency section. Since Fulbright fellowships to most countries are intensely competitive, this makes people who grew up speaking the language unlikely to win.

This is being challenged in court by the children of immigrants who believe that it unfairly discriminates against them. (NY Times) And it does discriminate against them. The question is, do the stated goals of the Fulbright program, which inlcude promoting international friendship, intercultural relations, and the study of foreign languages, make that discrimination ok? The Fulbright is not particularly interested in sending students back to the countries their parents came from, because that doesn't create new cultural connections, doesn't encourage students to study foreign languages, and, they say, doesn't really encourage students to think internationally. They absolutely do not want to send mainly children of recent immigrants to study in the countries their parents came from. Is that unfair discrimination?

There are lots of ways that American institutions discriminate against native speakers of languages. For example in high school I participated in a statewide competition for German students which explicitly banned those who grew up in German-speaking homes. Is that unfair?

The Fulbright program wants to broaden people's horizons, not reinforce already existing interests and connections. It wants people to study new languages in school, not improve the ones they speak at home. But, against that, the program as it stands absolutely does discriminate against the children of immigrants. Some of the people interviewed by the Times said this felt like double discrimination to them, since they had to fight their way through the educational system in English – and only elite graduate students can even apply for a Fulbright-Hays grant, so these people have already made it a long way – and then face discimination again for the thing that made education harder for them in the first place.

(As a personal aside, I felt like a DeSantis/Trump supporter when one woman who was born in Jordan suggested that the people she was competing against were privileged white folks who could learn languages by foreign travel and fancy summer language institutes, because I spent my summers earning money for school and never set foot outside the country until after I won my Fulbright, which was the only way I could afford it. Hmph.)

Based on the Times story, it looks like the people administering the Fulbright-Hays grants will respond to these suits by greatly de-emphasizing the whole section on language proficiency. I don't blame them, but that again means compromising one of their goals, promoting the study of foreign languages.

I think this connects to the broader debate over college admissions and affirmative action because it pits the right of students to fair treatment against the right of institutions to have goals. No university says its goal is to educate the applicants with the best grades and test scores. The actual goal of elite schools, whether they say it or not, is to shape the future leaders of the country and the world. (I mean here, not just politicians and CEOs, but the leadership in academia, nonprofit foundations, the arts, etc.) Because the American leadership class is now multi-racial, they want a multi-racial student body. Because the American leadership class is nothing like majority Asian, they do not want a majority Asian student body. They understand that grades and test scores are only loosely correlated with leadership potential, so they want to use other criteria in selecting their students. But this seems radically unfair to students who find that they would need much better records than those of different ethnic backgrounds.

I think the Fulbright folks are right that sending students back to the countries their parents were born in does not efficiently promote their goals. I also agree that their policy is discriminatory. What to do about that, I don't really know.