“70 Years of Bright Minds”

For 70 years, Fulbright Austria has been promoting mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States of America and Austria. Since then, Fulbright Austria has provided unique opportunities for Austrian and U.S. citizens to pursue their personal, scientific, artistic, and professional development. The awards Fulbright Austria offers allow scholars to research and teach, students to pursue their academic and professional interests, and teaching assistants to share their native language and culture with students in their host country. Beyond their academic pursuits, Fulbright Austria’s program participants have a unique opportunity to delve into American and Austrian cultures and to establish long-term friendships and partnerships with the people they meet during their time abroad. In turn, Americans and Austrians who come into contact with program participants gain vital cultural awareness of a foreign country.

This binational cross-cultural dialogue lays the groundwork for enhanced relationships and allows program participants to inspire sustainable change, such as creating international opportunities in the host country for those who are not able to travel abroad and acting as a catalyst for cultural understanding in both communities.

These life-changing opportunities are sponsored through core contributions from the U.S. and Austrian governments. Fulbright Austria also relies on significant financial contributions from partner institutions, foundations, and corporate and private donors to strengthen —and broaden— its endeavors. With these contributions, Fulbright Austria created opportunities for 44 Austrians and 48 Americans via the Fulbright Program in 2019–20, representing a total value of approximately 2.8 million EUR. In addition, Fulbright Austria administers the U.S. Teaching Assistantship (USTA) program on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. In 2019–20, the USTA program placed 150 U.S. teaching assistants in Austrian classrooms, representing a value of 1.6 million EUR. With the help of its patrons, Fulbright Austria will continue creating these opportunities to ensure another 70 years full of bright minds that embrace and foster the Fulbright mission.

For more information, please visit https://www.fulbright.at 

Fulbrighters are not hard to find on either side of the Atlantic - we would like to introduce two of them.

Fulbright Voices:

Former Ambassador Martin Weiss
One Year as a Fulbrighter at the University of Virginia

From 1988 to 1989 I spent one year at the University of Virginia School of Law on a Fulbright stipend. It was an experience I would not want to miss. Life and studies on a proper campus university proved to be exciting from a variety of perspectives: academically, the LL.M. (Master of Laws) program was challenging, exams had to be taken together with U.S. students – there was no “discount” for foreign students. My fellow students were – except for very few exceptions – highly motivated and focused on their studies, when the library closed its doors at midnight one never left there alone, but always in the company of a good many colleagues. The interaction with professors was amicable and close-knit, their doors where always open to us and two of the LL.M. seminars were even taught at the private residences of the professors – coffee and apple pie included! In addition, the university surroundings were impressive, particularly if you are used to Austrian dimensions: let me take Scott Stadium, home field to the UVA college football team (the Virginia Cavaliers) as just one example: whenever the Cavaliers had a home game it was not to be missed – a full stadium thus always guaranteed. Which meant that the team played in front of some 60,000 enthusiastic fans! Add the cheerleaders, the band, etc. – quite an experience. Which Austrian soccer game has ever more than even 30,000 spectators?

Besides the excellent academic offerings, studying in the United States also affords a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to know ´land and people´ – in a whole different manner than visiting as a ´mere tourist´ would ever allow. Because, after all, you live and study amongst your American peers, you laugh about the same jokes, you follow Presidential campaigns and debates together (back then it was George H. Bush versus Mike Dukakis) – in short you develop a sense for the country and its inner workings.

What is more, you are exposed to plenty of American history, as for example the Civil War. A war that seems so far away when seen through European eyes but is still quite present in much of the United States. I will never forget when, while walking over a battlefield in the South of the United States (in Atlanta, Georgia), an African American tour guide explained to us that “this is the place where the Yankees (= the Northerners) killed our Southern boys.” Another moment I remember well was a discussion about the death penalty, when I found myself to be in a distinct minority opposing it. Does not every rational human have to oppose the death penalty? Apparently not. Because those were all educated, smart people who obviously held an opinion very different from my own. Another valuable experience.

In addition to interactions with American colleagues I immensely enjoyed communicating with my fellow international students – in my case coming from The Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, India, Israel, etc. It was a great opportunity to get to know other legal systems, but also to compare different career paths, approaches to life, and more. And to build friendships that still endure some 30 years later.

If I had to decide again to pursue a post-graduate education in the United States, would I do it? In a heartbeat!

Martin Weiss has been the Austrian Ambassador to the United States from November 1, 2019 to June 2022. A career diplomat, he previously served as Austrian Ambassador to Israel (2015-2019) and Cyprus (2009-2012), as well as Consul General in Los Angeles (2004-2009). Ambassador Weiss holds a law degree from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of Virginia. He is married and a father of two.

Kimberly Kahnhauser Freeman
A former Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Austria

Interview by Hannes Richter

Ms. Kahnhauser Freeman, let’s start with the organization you direct – the Women’s Foreign Policy Group (WFPG). What do you do?

The WFPG is a network of women and gender champions dedicated to advancing women’s leadership in international affairs, which we do through our global issues discussions, publications, professional development programs, and mentoring. Traditionally, our programming has been focused in New York and Washington, DC, but since we moved our programming online in March, we are engaging people around the world, which has really enriched our discussions.

Our mentoring program, which has always been central to our mission, is designed to support women who are in early stages in their careers, as well as mid-career women who are taking the next step towards senior leadership. We believe that mentoring is always a two-way street, and have continued and expanded those efforts during COVID. We launched two new virtual mentoring initiatives: a one-to-one matching program and Mentoring Minutes office hours, which have both been very successful, and hopefully also fun for both the mentees and the mentors, especially during this time of increased isolation. In addition to our programming, we’ve also ramped up our blog and started a weekly newsletter highlighting virtual foreign policy programming hosted by think tanks and partner organizations where at least 50% of their speakers are women.

You do also maintain a program working with diplomats?

Yes, absolutely! We work very closely with American diplomats and the State Department, as well as with foreign diplomats based at the UN or the consulates in New York, and of course the embassies in Washington, DC. Many senior-level women, ambassadors and permanent representatives, have been speakers for us, and they and their colleagues are active participants in our programming. The WFPG offers them a network to connect with each other, and with U.S. policy-makers, which can be particularly valuable for those from smaller missions who may not have as many women colleagues. We also publish an annual Guide to Women Leaders in International Affairs, which will be available on our website by the time this interview is printed. It lists the women in senior foreign policy positions in the United States as well as top women policymakers and diplomats around the world. This year’s guide will of course include Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner, among others.

When you mentor young women at the college level, or recent graduates, do you still see going abroad for a while as an important factor in their career development?

Certainly. If you want to work in international affairs and foreign policy, there is no substitute for having an experience abroad – whether it is a year or more after school, or a semester abroad while you are still in school. Living abroad can be particularly valuable in terms of improving crosscultural communication skills – and of course foreign language skills. These experiences also open your eyes to different viewpoints. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to spend a year abroad as an exchange student in high school, again in college, and then after graduation, as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant. Each of those experiences helped to shape my view of the world and have certainly made me an advocate for study abroad programs.

Over time, we have witnessed some fluctuation in the number of students going abroad. In your experience over the years, have you noticed any changes in the number of students and graduates willing to go abroad? Are fewer students going because they are under increased pressure to finish their degrees quickly, or because they face financial pressure?

Although I don’t focus specifically on exchange programs, anecdotally, I do see tremendous interest in studying abroad from the students that we work with, but cost can be a real barrier—not just the cost of tuition and travel, but also the lost income from not working a full or part-time job. This can be especially true for students who attend universities that charge full home school tuition for study abroad programs, which is often significantly more expensive than tuition overseas. If that had been the case when I was weighing options, I might not have spent an entire year abroad. Fellowships and scholarships can help to make this opportunity more accessible, and I hope that schools and foundations will continue to invest in these initiatives.

Following up on your study abroad experience: you mentioned that you served as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Austria, but you also studied at the University of Vienna before that?

Yes, in college I split my junior year between the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and the University of Vienna. After I graduated from college, I returned to Austria as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant.

What exactly did you do as a Fulbrighter in Tirol?

Other than attempting to learn to ski and eating my weight in kiachl (a fried yeast dough pastry)? As a teaching assistant, I was posted to an agricultural boarding school outside of Innsbruck. There, I worked closely with two English teachers, taught a few larger classroom lessons, and led one-on-one speaking practice sessions, which were especially helpful for students from more remote areas who had had very limited exposure to native English speakers. I worked with the students on vocabulary and grammar, and also helped them to understand a bit more about American culture.

Interesting point – did you find that those students harbored a lot of stereotypes about American life?

Yes—but that’s not uncommon. Americans often have stereotypes as well. Many of the stereotypes I encountered centered around high school life in the United States as it is depicted in TV shows and movies, which is often fairly far from the reality.

Did you have any kind of culture shock when you came to that school, compared with American schools?

What was new to me was working in a small village at an agricultural high school. I grew up in the suburbs and have only lived in cities since then, so I knew next to nothing about farming. The students produced cheese and schnapps at the school—which was certainly nothing like my high school experience in Long Island. They had a lot of specific questions about agriculture in the U.S., so I had to learn a lot about my own country in order to answer them. For example, I had no idea how many hectares the average American farm was—or even what a hectare was. Nor did I know a lot about genetically modified produce – which was another topic that generated a lot of interest from students. I was also very surprised by the range of dialects spoken by my students when they spoke German.

Ms. Kahnhauser Freeman, thank you for your time.

Kimberly Kahnhauser Freeman is the Executive Director of the Women’s Foreign Policy Group and was a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in Tirol, Austria.

More Information:
Women’s Foreign Policy Group
https://www.wfpg.org