The 50th anniversary of the Luso-American Cultural Commission, more generally known as the Fulbright Commission, was celebrated in Lisbon last week.
The celebrations, which were held at Palácio Foz in Restauradores, included speeches from David Ballard, Head of Trade at the US Embassy, the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Luís Amado and the President of Fulbrighters Portugal, João Lobo Antunes.
The session also included a specially-recorded message from United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as a documentary entitled Fulbright Portugal – 50 Years.
The Fulbright Commission in Portugal was set up in 1960 through a diplomatic accord signed between the Portuguese and United States governments and has since then run the Fulbright Programme which is an educational exchange between the two countries.
Since that time, 1,300 Portuguese students and teachers and 750 United States students and teachers have received Fulbright Scholarships in a wide variety of academic areas.
The Fulbright Programme is currently run in over 150 countries and was created in 1946 in the United States by Senator J. William Fulbright with the aim of promoting mutual understanding, the sharing of ideas and the finding of solutions to global problems through international student exchanges.
