How the American Oil and Gas Industry Funds the Fulbright Program

When Carina Spiro first determined to use to the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in 2016 as a senior in school, a specific phrase caught her eye. “In the description of Malaysia, the program said applicants must have ‘a sense of adventure,’” she stated. “I thought, that’s me, sign me up.”

The famend cultural alternate program operates out of an arm of the U.S. State Department to ship teams of American younger folks and students overseas annually. Spiro utilized to the English instructing element and was accepted to the 2018 Malaysia Fulbright yr. She didn’t notice that her journey in Malaysia could be related with the oil and fuel {industry}.

Spiro was assigned to work at a rural faculty in Sabah, a state on the northern a part of the island of Borneo. One day, she and her fellow English instructing assistants—ETAs, in Fulbright-speak—had been invited to what she referred to as a “corporate luncheon” within the capital of Kuala Lumpur. Their lunch date was held in an workplace within the metropolis’s iconic Petronas Twin Towers, that are named after Malaysia’s nationwide oil and fuel firm. There, over a meal with executives from ConocoPhillips, the ETAs realized that it wasn’t the U.S. or Malaysian governments that may be paying for his or her yr overseas. Rather, ConocoPhillips was choosing up the entire tab for ETAs in Sabah—and, the ETAs realized, the oil and fuel firm was making much more cash obtainable for further studying camps, particular programming, and different actions for college kids. (A spokesperson from ConocoPhillips confirmed in an e mail that ETAs “have been invited to our office premises in our efforts to get to know them, and during the visit we present to them an overview on ConocoPhillips business and our community program here in Malaysia.”)

“No one told us [about the ConocoPhillips funding] before we went to this corporate lunch meeting,” Spiro stated. “I think a lot of people were really uncomfortable with that, myself included.”

In interviews with 4 former Fulbright ETAs who taught in Malaysia, Earther has realized that at the least three massive American oil firms—Hess, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon—had been main monetary contributors to the Fulbright Program. Contributions from the businesses ranged from funds earmarked for particular occasions to paying altogether for some Fulbright ETAs to show for the entire yr. The ETAs estimate that these three firms gave at the least 710,000 ringgit—the equal of $170,202—for provides, programming, and stipends for the 2018 ETA program (though with out full entry to inside Fulbright budgets, they stated it could possibly be extra). All the younger folks we spoke to stated they weren’t instructed concerning the oil and fuel funding earlier than they determined to use for his or her Fulbright.

Earther despatched a number of questions on oil and fuel funding to the Fulbright Malaysia program in addition to the State Department, together with particular questions concerning the financing numbers the ETAs referenced of their letter. A State Department official instructed us in a brief response that each the personal sector and Fulbright alumni add to the contributions of the U.S. and accomplice governments, which helps grants and different initiatives. They didn’t reply particularly to questions on oil and fuel funding.

“I thought going in that public diplomacy programs would be funded by the U.S. government and the host government,” stated Rachel Jacoby, one other ETA who labored in Malaysia in 2019. “I don’t think anyone knew oil companies would be funding our grants. These companies are using Fulbright to essentially launder their image. They’re positioning themselves as indispensable to the U.S. government, which, in my opinion, shouldn’t be beholden to corporations, especially in public diplomacy programs.”

Spiro is presently a public faculty instructor at a center faculty exterior of Boston. She had labored in outside training and was eager about instructing as a profession when she entered this system. She and I share an alma mater: Bowdoin College, a small liberal arts faculty in Maine. As a senior making an attempt to determine what to do after commencement, I bear in mind shopping Fulbright ETA alternatives, armed with solely a obscure sense that it’s one thing you could possibly do to assist folks and see the world. (In Bowdoin’s press release on graduates who had been accepted to Fulbright this year, a director on the faculty is quoted as saying that college students accepted to the ETA program “will have the opportunity to draw upon the best of their Bowdoin education and contribute to the common good as cultural ambassadors in their host countries.”)

Spiro, who graduated some years after me, had the identical notion. “Coming from Bowdoin, it was this thing that was seen as, it’s got this great name recognition, it’s a great thing to put on a resume, everyone was pushing people hard towards it,” she stated. “I hadn’t thought much about the connections to the State Department and how there’s in some ways an agenda behind this. I learned a lot of that on the job as I was starting, and realized more and more what was expected of the role.”

The program was initially proposed in a 1945 invoice by Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright; within the aftermath of two world wars, Fulbright wished to create a program that may, within the language of the unique invoice, promote “international goodwill through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture and science.” Fulbright proposed funding this program with the gross sales of surplus conflict property overseas again to their authentic governments, basically permitting the U.S. to recoup higher worth on among the investments they’d made whereas enabling a cultural alternate. The first Fulbright students had been sent on exchange to China in 1948.

By the late Nineteen Fifties, gross sales of U.S.-owned surpluses overseas had been drying up, and this system wanted a monetary pivot. In 1961, the Fulbright-Hays Act each established funding for the Fulbright Program within the Congressional funds and allowed “foreign governments, international organizations and private individuals, firms, associations, agencies, and other groups” to contribute financially.

Currently, funding for Fulbright is a mixture between that Congressional funds, which supplies a base 65% of cash for this system, contributions from collaborating governments, and cash from the personal sector; in 2017, personal sector funding from U.S. firms contributed almost $38 million to the general $415 million program. In addition to the ETA program, Fulbright additionally provides an open research award for college kids and students from the U.S. to do analysis overseas, in addition to international students to review within the U.S. Special grants are additionally obtainable for particular areas of research.

The administration of the Fulbright Program varies by nation, which means particular details about company sponsorships like those in Malaysia is just about nonexistent on the official State Department web site. In 50 nations, together with Malaysia, this system is administered by a binational Fulbright fee, which makes selections on particulars like funding from the personal sector for particular applications. On the website of the Malaysian Fulbright fee, there’s no point out of both of the three oil firms ETAs stated helped to pay for this system.

“They’re very hush-hush about it,” Jacoby stated. “They’re not like, ‘come to Malaysia for a year and teach English, and you get to accept money from Big Oil!’”

The program might hold its Big Oil ties underneath wraps, however that hasn’t stopped the oil and fuel firms funding Malaysia’s Fulbright from bragging about their involvement. In 2019, ConocoPhillips issued a press release saying its sponsorship of the Fulbright ETA program in Sabah, the state the place Spiro labored. “ConocoPhillips is a very important U.S. company in Sabah, and it takes seriously its corporate social responsibility to help the communities and the young people of Sabah,” then-ambassador to Malaysia, Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir, is quoted as saying within the press launch.

Fulbright occasions sponsored by Exxon within the state of Terengganu have been written up in local newspapers. (The firm operates a major crude oil terminal positioned in Terengganu.) Hess, in the meantime, has posted about its continued support of the ETA program on Facebook. Hess’s funding of the ETA program, to the tune of a $375,000 grant over “several years” to help ETA work within the province of Kelantan, even received recognition from the American-Malaysian Chamber of Commerce. The group declared Hess to be “one of the top corporate citizens in the country” in 2018.

“ConocoPhillips prides itself on being a responsible corporate citizen, and we strive to make a positive impact across our operations and in the communities in which we operate,” a consultant from ConocoPhillips stated in an e mail despatched to Earther in response to questions we despatched about this story. “The ETA program is strongly aligned with ConocoPhillips’ CSR commitment towards education as it focuses on invigorating student learning through skills development and mastering the English language through activities.” (Neither Exxon nor Hess responded to requests for touch upon this story.)

American oil and fuel firms have an curiosity in increase their public profile in Malaysia. In 2019, the nation was the second-largest oil and fuel producer in Southeast Asia and the fifth-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world. The {industry} contributes about 35% of the government’s overall budget, principally via Petronas, which has managed a lot of the nation’s sources since its founding within the early Nineteen Seventies however partners with other international companies for upstream production. Climate change—pushed by human fossil gas use—is, in flip, hitting Malaysia onerous: some cities have recorded temperature increases of as much as 12 levels Fahrenheit (6.7 levels Celsius) since 1998, whereas sea degree rise is projected to greatly affect at the least 9 states by 2050.

A spotlight of the ETAs’ expertise whereas in Malaysia was placing on what had been generally known as English camps, occasions that would vary from half a day to a number of days lengthy to supply English-immersive experiences for college kids. “A personal relationship I have with a student is, from what I can tell, more impactful to that students’ overall experience than one afternoon at a camp,” Charlie Junkins, an ETA who labored within the state of Kelantan, stated. “But [camps] are very deliverable events, and expose ETAs to more students than they might otherwise meet.”

Funding for these camps may come from a number of sources—together with oil and fuel cash. Junkins took benefit of some Hess cash to placed on an English camp for his college students; the one stipulation from the corporate, he stated, was that he put the Hess emblem on any T-shirts and banners he created. As a busy ETA juggling a number of obligations and monetary squeezes, he stated the simple availability of the Hess cash was a welcome change.

“I just remember being grateful I didn’t have to keep receipts [for the Hess grant],” he stated. “For the U.S. embassy grants, you have to itemize everything on your budget and provide receipts. The government money makes you stay much more accountable.” (Junkins stated that Hess additionally took him and different Kelantan ETAs on a tour of its warehouse and handled them to a lunch with some native executives, the place they got a presentation on Hess’s position in the local people.)

Hess wasn’t the one firm mandating visibility in return for its help. “If you were making t-shirts for your kids, the t-shirts needed to have the ConocoPhillips logo on it,” Jacoby, who had entry to grease and fuel grants like those Junkins used, stated.

For Spiro and different ETAs, accepting this cash was an ethical quandary of how greatest to serve the folks they had been there to assist.

“My job is to help build community and teach English to people who have not had access to resources and specifically money, and if a company gives us money to help do a thing, that’s good,” she stated. “But seeing so much of the optics and the PR piece behind it of ConocoPhillips specifically left all their branding on stuff, kids wearing T-shirts that read ConocoPhillips. … For my students in this moment, having this money and this ability to do things is a positive, but zooming out to this bigger picture, it’s like, what is best for people in a country with such a long history of colonialism? As a white person to be saying, this is good, or this is bad—is it my place to say what that should be?”

Still, many ETAs determined to deal with the difficulty head-on to see if this system could be open to alter. Near the top of their Fulbright expertise, greater than 100 ETAs from the 2019 cohort in addition to earlier years signed on to a letter addressed to Fulbright Malaysia workers, higher-ups on the State Department, and stakeholders, expressing their concern over continued oil and fuel funding and asking this system to refuse it. They offered this letter to Fulbright Malaysia workers at a gathering held in October of 2019 to mark the top of this system.

“As American ETAs, we are benefiting from the exact companies that cause continued and violent harm to the country that we have called home for the last ten months,” they wrote. The letter goes on to explain how the local weather disaster is already impacting Malaysia, together with the lethal floods of the winter of 2014-15. Students in applications taught by ETAs, the letter states, “have already expressed climate-related concerns to us including: the cancellation of school activities due to heat waves, lack of water at schools due to drought, fear of extreme flooding events that cause the destruction of homes, poor water quality, and the loss of generational livelihoods.”

The group obtained no response from both the State Department or the Malaysian fee, regardless of repeated follow-ups. That doesn’t imply, nonetheless, that the higher-ups didn’t pay attention to the letter—and fear concerning the message it’d ship to future folks excited about Fulbright. In a letter despatched to ETAs accepted for the 2020 Fulbright yr, Lakhdhir disclosed that ConocoPhillips and Hess had been offering funds to Fulbright as a part of their company social duty applications.

“I believe in the power of the program to make a meaningful impact in the development of Malaysian students and that the program is strengthened by having private sector partners,” she wrote. “I understand that some former ETAs have voiced concerns about the association with oil and gas companies. … I do want to assure you that all private sector funding received for the ETA program comes without any conditions or stipulations. It is for the sole benefit of the ETA program and is not part of any marketing campaign.”

For Spiro, that clarification falls flat. “Maybe I’m just jaded towards capitalism, but it’s all for a reason,” Spiro stated.

Funds used to again the ETA program might not have had specific stipulations, as Lakhdir asserted in her letter. But it’s a complete misunderstanding of the lengthy historical past of oil and fuel firms manipulating the general public belief via branding. As Exxon found when it revolutionized promoting within the Nineteen Seventies, an organization doesn’t should be instantly promoting a product in an effort to profit from a marketing campaign; relatively, merely constructing its public picture via associations with optimistic actions and applications is commonly sufficient. Exxon might not have had any “explicit stipulations” when it started sponsoring episodes of PBS’s Masterpiece Theater throughout the Nineteen Seventies oil disaster, but it surely knew that viewers would have a optimistic affiliation with the corporate’s model throughout a tumultuous time for the {industry}. Similarly, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and Hess constructing faculty applications via a U.S. program with an internationally acknowledged title in a robust oil and fuel hub can’t be divorced from the businesses’ objectives.

Funding cultural alternate like Fulbright that bases itself in scholarship is simply one other installment within the {industry}’s lengthy historical past of utilizing training to push its messaging. Like oil and fuel firms’ profitable enterprise into greater training, applications like Fulbright symbolize one more avenue to make sure oil firms proceed to make themselves seem like a vital a part of our every day lives. And children in Malaysia seeing fossil gas branding and sponsorship of occasions like English camps is just like how firms have indoctrinated children of comparable ages within the U.S.

It stays to be seen how the oil and fuel funding will proceed in Malaysia. The pandemic lower the 2020 Fulbright Program quick, and ETAs had been despatched house that March; the State Department official instructed us that this system stays suspended. Lakhdhir left her place to turn out to be the chief secretary of the Department of State in January 2021 when President Joe Biden took workplace. The ConocoPhillips spokesperson, which stated that the corporate doesn’t fund Fulbrights in every other nation, stated the corporate is “committed to working with the US Embassy should they resurrect the Program.”

Even with the pause, many younger Americans nonetheless wish to be a part of the Fulbright Program, lured by its lengthy historical past and the probabilities it opens to make a distinction on the planet. Spiro stated she’s often put in touch with college students from Bowdoin who’re excited about or who’ve already utilized to the Fulbright to ask about her expertise.

“I’ve been trying not to scare people about it, but also being real and saying pretty much everything is unexpected,” Spiro stated. “It’s not just the State Department funding you to go spend a year abroad because they think that might be fun for you. People have an agenda in this, and you will potentially get caught up in other people’s agendas.”