Now Donald Trump really has done it. He’s cutting nearly half the budget of the Fulbright programme, the fund that has paid for 12,000 Brits to travel to the US to study and for a corresponding number of Americans to come here. Given that the beneficiaries include people who’ve done terrifically well for themselves – alumni and alumnae include Bill Clinton, Yvette Cooper, Onora O’Neill, Liam Byrne MP, the philosopher, and, er, Sylvia Plath – there has been a corresponding fuss. Some of the beneficiaries have written to The Times to suggest that the cuts will “devastate the programme and damage irrevocably the most successful cultural diplomacy initiative in the history of the United States.”
Well, maybe, maybe not. I got a Fulbright scholarship to the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, having been told by the present editor of the Today programme that American schools of journalism made mustard-keen reporters.
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