Ambassador Remarks

Remarks for Ambassador Robert J. Callahan
Fulbright Reception

Wednesday September 16, 2009
Casa Grande

Good evening and welcome to Casa Grande and the U.S. Embassy.  It's great to have so many Nicaraguan and American Fulbrighters here.
 
When Senator Fulbright created these scholarships in 1946, his aim was, "to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs, and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship." 

"Live in peace and friendship."

That’s an ambitious aspiration, and we seem to be no closer to that goal today than when Fulbright first expressed his hope 63 years ago.

But let’s parse that sentence and look at those five abstract nouns:  knowledge, reason, compassion, friendship, and peace.  Of course, there are no accurate tests to measure collective knowledge, no metrics to gauge friendship, no statistics on compassion or reason.

But let’s see if anecdotally we can determine if we’ve made some progress over the past six decades.

We surely have more knowledge about each other, and at every level.  Until recently, say the last three decades, it was rare for anyone but the wealthiest to travel for enjoyment and edification.  Now it’s commonplace for people from throughout the world to do so. 

Although I could never prove it, I suspect that Fulbright scholars, who have been drawn from all segments of society, returned home with tales of the wonders of travel and inspired others to get out and learn about the world.

It happened in my family.  My mother’s brother earned a Fulbright to France in the early 1960s, the first American Catholic priest to be selected for the research program.   From his base in Paris he journeyed to North Africa, the Middle East, and other places.  I remember as an adolescent listening to his stories of exotic customs and distant lands and resolving that I too would travel someday. 

Who knows, maybe that’s why I’m here with you this evening.
 
Then there is reason.  If knowledge leads to reason, as it should, then the knowledge you have all gained from your scholarships shows itself in the reason you bring to your thoughts and studies.  If a Fulbrighter traveled farther afield, say to Asia or Africa, and an Asian or African studied in the United States, they all learned a profoundly different way of looking at things, of thinking, and, yes, of reasoning.

Today, the Chinese have adopted the best in Western surgical practices and Westerners get acupuncture for their aches and pains.

Compassion.  At first blush we would likely claim that the world is short on many virtues and that compassion is among the scarcest.  But in 1946 there were no organizations such as Doctors without Frontiers, Journalists without Borders, or any number of international relief groups.  In 1946 we had the Red Cross and a few others, but today there are thousands, all working to relieve hunger, disease, illiteracy, oppression, and the many other assorted ills that afflict us and our societies. 

I now turn to friendship and here I think we can make a strong case that Fulbright’s dream has become a reality for millions of people. 

Let me pose a simple question:  how many of you have a foreign friend?  I should think everyone here has quite a few. 

I have scores of them, from the Central American isthmus to the ancient cities of Athens and Rome.  My parents in Middle America, I dare say, had perhaps two or three and I would doubt that my grandparents had even one. 
And now peace.  We can look at the Middle East and South Asia and find the most devastating kinds of indiscriminate violence occurring daily. 

We can scan the globe and point to terrorist groups and criminal bands living amongst us in our cities and towns. 

We can listen to threats of annihilation and genocide emanating from the Korean peninsula and the caves of eastern Afghanistan. 

Yet, we can also look at Europe and Asia, where a war that took over 50 million lives and was fought by armies from every continent had ended a mere year before Senator Fulbright announced the creation of his program, and this bloodletting had followed by a single generation another war that had taken over 15 million lives. 

Today, war among the members of the European Union, many of whom were bitter enemies two generations ago, is not just unlikely, it is inconceivable. 

And Asian nations, with one unfortunate exception, now want to compete in business and not on the battlefield.

I think – in fact, I know – that Senator Fulbright did not expect his program to put an end to the world’s armed struggles quickly or easily. 

And if we take a longer perspective, if we accept that change of this magnitude and with this degree of difficulty will come about only gradually and over generations, then I think we can pronounce Fulbright’s vision a qualified success.

We have not eliminated war – far from it – but we have avoided many armed struggles through negotiations and have contained others when they have erupted.

Perhaps – just maybe – the Fulbright Program had something to do with bringing that about.  But one thing is certain:  you have nurtured this program, have contributed your efforts and time and understanding, and you have made a difference. 

Although you have remained Nicaraguans and Americans, you have also become world citizens, have put on display the knowledge, reason, compassion, and friendship that may eventually lead to a durable peace.

I congratulate and thank you for that and urge you to continue your efforts.  Now, I want to introduce the newest members of that honored club, 12 students who just returned from their studies in the United States. 

They too will now begin to share what they saw, learned, and experienced with others, and to make their contributions to the realization of Senator Fulbright’s ambitious aspiration.