Racialization and International Academic Mobility: Mixed Legacies in the Fulbright Program
- Gerardo Blanco, Center for International Higher Education at Boston College
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While international education has undergone significant transformations in recent years, it has been recognized that universities and countries that want to attract students from other countries have to pay attention to their branding and reputation. Racial imaginaries are part of global academic mobility. While discourses of inclusion and diversity are prominent in the marketing of academic exchange programs, their origins and legacy are more complex. The Fulbright Program is the flagship U.S. international exchange program and constitutes one of the most ubiquitous brands in the world of international education. It can be argued that the Fulbright Program is the most visible face of international education in the U.S. However, J. William Fulbright, the architect and namesake of the successful exchange program that celebrated 75 years of operation, has come under scrutiny as higher education in the United States responds to the call for racial justice in higher education and all spheres of social life. Amid the Black Lives Matter movement and other racial justice initiatives, higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United States and local governments have moved in the direction of removing Confederate statues and other symbols, along with the names of slave-owners and of those who supported racial segregation and racism. This webinar focuses on the juxtaposition of the Fulbright Program’s brand and its historical racial legacy.
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Gerardo Blanco is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. He is also a Fulbright Specialist. His research explores the intersections of quality and internationalization in higher education. An interdisciplinary scholar, his research has been published in top international journals in the fields of Higher Education and Comparative Education. He has received several research awards from the Comparative & International Education Society’s Higher Education SIG. He has been a visiting expert at Shaanxi Normal University (China) and at the University of Kassel (Germany). He was an Erasmus+ fellow at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland). He earned his Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Before joining Boston College, he was associate professor at the University of Connecticut, where he also served as faculty director of Global House, a living-learning community for international students.
