Fulbright 30th Anniversary Gala at the Liszt Academy of Music
The Hungarian-American Fulbright Commission (Fulbright Alapítvány) celebrated the 30th Anniversary of its establishment on October 7, 2022 at a Gala held in the Solti Concert Hall at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. If the pre-Commission period is included, the history of the Fulbright Scholarship Program in Hungary goes back another 14 years to 1978.
Our Gala program recognized all Fulbrighters, Hungarians and Americans alike, through the presentation of culture. One important leg of the global Fulbright program, cultural exchange, means experiencing the different, sharing the familiar, and integrating this synthesis into a life of learning and curiosity. Fulbright scholars and students in all fields, such as the natural and social sciences, engineering, law, the arts and humanities are destined to absorb the culture and heritage of the US and Hungary respectively.
The Commission and its staff are eternally grateful to our alumni in the US and Hungary, who volunteer to act as peer reviewers, references, hosts, mentors, board members and interview panel members. Our work would not be possible without the support of the alumni community, thank you.
We are also grateful to our two founders, the governments of the United States and of Hungary, for their financial, technical and logistical support over the past three decades. Read Ambassador David Pressman’s remarks.
The Commission would like to thank our Hungarian host universities, many of whom are here with us today, for offering not only academic homes for our American students and scholars, but also for their ever-increasing financial contributions. In this sense too, Hungarian universities are rapidly converging with their US peers.
Our Board, upon suggestions from staff, has approved up to 5 Fulbright alumni travel awards per year, on a first-come-first-served basis, to help defray the cost of Hungarian Fulbright alumni attending academic conferences in the United States in order to serve on a panel or better yet, to present a paper. Details forthcoming.
The Fulbright Commission has decided to present an award, the Fulbright Hungary Medal, to five members of our alumni community who have served the cause over the past three decades.
Their service includes negotiating the initial bilateral agreement between Hungary and the United States, serving on and/or chairing the board, organizing alumni association activity, peer reviewing, interviewing, hosting, recommending and mentoring generations of students and scholars. Their time spent in the US as grantees, or in the case of Professor Donald Morse, as a US grantee in Hungary, contributed to US-Hungarian cultural, educational and scientific exchange in more ways that we can possibly list.
The awardees are: Professor Donald Morse; Professor Zoltán Abádi-Nagy; Professor Katalin Nagy; Professor Zita Zoltay Paprika.
There is a fifth awardee, who unfortunately has passed away a few weeks before this event. Our immediate past Board chairman, Professor Tibor Frank.
He will be sorely missed by all of us. We honored Professor Tibor Frank’s memory with a minute of silence and reflection.
More pictures of our event in the gallery below. Video material soon!
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