Sharp Cuts in Fulbright Grants Meet Loud Criticism at Harvard

John B. Fox Jr. '59, director of the Office for Graduate and Career Plans, yesterday blasted as "unwise, insensitive, and a serious misappropriation of funds" the severe Congressional cutbacks announced in Fulbright scholarships for 1969-70.

News of the 72 per cent reduction in the international student exchange program, which broke yesterday in the New York Times, did not come as a shock to Fox, however, who cited the growing opposition in Congress to such projects.

"There's not much we can do," he said. "We don't have a counterplan to take up the slack. All Harvard can do is to express its dismay at this decision."

At the moment the cutbacks are not serious for Harvard, Fox said, explaining that the scarcity of graduate draft deferments has already limited the number of students in the Fulbright program. "But when the draft situation clears," he said, "the Fulbrights won't be back."

The Fulbright program has been generous to Harvard in recent years. Each year American students, undergraduate and graduate, have won about 900 one year scholarships for study and travel abroad. Of these, Harvard students have usually won about 60, more than any other university in the country.

Even More

Because the Fulbright awards are not announced until May, however, as many as half of the Harvard winners, having made other plans or accepted rival awards, annually turn them down. Last year the severity of the new draft laws further cut into the number of Harvard students accepting Fulbrights.

The State Department sent word of the current reductions to the 18 participating European countries last week, citing as cause the need to cut down on American travel abroad. A member of the Institute of International Education, the coordinating body for Fulbrights in the United States, commented in New York yesterday that student exchange with Great Britain, the largest and most attractive program to American students, "has in all probability been wiped out."

Because a different bi-national commission must determine the response of each country to the cutbacks, the exact picture for next year will not immediately become clear. Fox has asked students to delay their applications, which are due Oct. 21, for a couple of weeks in order to avoid applying for programs which are terminated.

"The whole program is in serious trouble," he said yesterday. Richard M. Hunt, assistant dean of the Graduate School, sighed and said, "I cannot understand it."