A few days ago, I wrote one of the saddest emails to one of my younger friends and it read,“Please consider applying for the scholarship X this year. My friends in the US are worried that their President might get rid of that program as well. You must have heard that he has already cut funding for many educational and cultural programs. Since a significant percentage of federal funding for the US universities are being taken out, your chance of getting direct scholarships to specific universities is becoming extremely limited…”
Encourage the best students
Each year I write at least two or three recommendations for my colleagues and former students, who apply for graduate programs in the US. With my extensive training and experience in the US, I always encourage my best students to pursue graduate studies(‘postgraduate studies’- the familiar term in Sri Lanka) at leading universities in that country. Those programs are holistic and comprehensive. And once you get in, you are fully funded for at least five years. For those of us in the Humanities and Social Sciences, it is almost like getting paid for reading widely and deeply. I know this for a fact, studying for six years at the University of Wisconsin, teaching at Cornell University for four years and spending one semester at Harvard as a visiting scholar. Coming from a rural working-class family in Sri Lanka, I was able to receive such education and training since I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1998.
I am eternally grateful to the Fulbright program and American public for that initial breakthrough- two years of funding that helped me to focus totally on education. And then, the University of Wisconsin gave me four more years of funding to finish my doctoral studies. All that money came from the American taxpayer- maybe a much of it as federal grants.
In 2008, I returned to Sri Lanka with a quality PhD and some considerable training and I have been busy with scholarly and creative writing ever since. At the risk of sounding immodest, I can say that I could become the leading scholar in Sinhala literary studies in my generation. It was Sri Lanka’s free education system and the generosity of the American public that made all that possible.
This brief sketch of my career is given to make a point: Now, the US President has already cut down funding for educational and cultural programs.
Iowa International Writers’ Program
The Iowa Public Radio recently reported that the Department of State has cancelled federal funding for Iowa International Writers’ Program(IWP) ending a 58 – year partnership. The IWP helped several Sri Lankan writers and poets to gain international exposure and training there at the University of Iowa. So many writers from all over the world benefited from that program. And it is one of the cultural legacies the US also celebrates.
I recently heard that the American Corner at the Kandy public library has been adversely affected by the ‘Trump cut.’ The American Corner in Kandy has been conducting some excellent cultural and educational programs, for some of which I was a resource person. A few years ago, when I was writing a book on the art of contemporary short stories, the library at the American Corner provided me with superb anthologies and scholarly books that I could not find at the University library and anywhere else in the country. In addition, the Corner is a great place in Kandy to spend time reading new American literature. In a city, where secular cultural spaces are limited, the American Corner was not a corner but a center for some of us who like to have at least a glimpse of an international cultural life.
Enrich public life
Dollars spent on cultural and educational programs might not yield immediate and tangible results that corporate thinkers expect. But such programs enrich our public life in numerous ways. For example, films shown and discussed at the American Corner in Kandy might have already inspired some budding filmmakers or writers who are still unknown. Let me again recall a personal experience.
When I was studying at the University of Colombo from 1990 to 1994, the American Center was at Flower Road – walking distance from the University of Colombo. Unlike the British Council, the library at the American Center was free. Some university students frequented this place and read American literature. Those days I did not understand everything I read.
But I kept reading, which eventually helped me improve my English. I remember reading several Hemingway books and American plays from the Center. That might have indirectly helped me win a Fulbright scholarship a few years later. But the Center was shifted to Kollupitiya, making it nearly inaccessible for us, rural folk who happened to be studying in Colombo.
Senator J. William Fulbright in his Arrogance of Power (1966) talks about two Americas: “One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern super patriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other is self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic, one is good humoured, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power(245).”
I am not sure to which America Mr. Trump belongs- perhaps to a third America much cruder than the second. Senator Fulbright describes the above in his book. I take his book out from my personal collection occasionally and reread a passage or two. This time around, it was with a great sense of sadness that I reread the book.
