"The Fulbright Difference": The Future of Visiting Academics in Turkey and Elsewhere

Let me begin this article with two provisos; it will not seek to analyze the work of the Fulbright Commission in any great detail; nor will it comment on the effectiveness of that work. My title was inspired by a 1992 book of the same name, which contained the reminiscences of forty American academics of their experiences in foreign countries, with the express purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of the Fulbright program in promoting "the spirit of the Fulbright idea", which involves increasing awareness of the meaning of freedom and its most successful political construct Democracy Arndt and Rubin, 1993: 1-3 . For the editors of this volume, the "difference" involves changing certain "habits of the heart and mind", both in the Fulbright academics themselves, and in the people whom they associated with on their foreign trips Arndt and Rubin, 1993: 2 . But clearly there are other types of difference involved in these types of exchange, which have more to do with cultural differences encountered by academics when working in a foreign context; and it is these types of difference that I shall examine here. In other words, what I want to do is to focus on the question of whether such differences encountered by academics working abroad can be successfully engaged with if not necessarily overcome , and thereby promote a "difference" - or a change - in people's ways of thinking.