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Anxiety And Confusion Plague Fulbright Scholars Called Back Home Due To Coronavirus

When several dozen Fulbright grantees gathered in Amman, Jordan, for a meeting about their program’s status on March 15, some were still optimistic they could stay. They’d received the same email that most Fulbrighters worldwide had gotten the previous Friday, which suggested they should probably go home.

“It said ‘voluntary,’ but the language, it felt more like ‘volun-telling,’” said Hana Hobscheid, a 25-year-old Fulbright grantee who had been working as an English teaching assistant.

All U.S. Fulbright programs worldwide — which provide grants for thousands of academics, students, artists and professionals to study or teach at global universities — were suspended on March 19.

For the Jordan cohort, the worldwide coronavirus pandemic didn’t seem like much of a threat there at the time. There had been one travel-related case, and after that individual recovered, the country had declared itself free of the virus. But over the weekend the situation escalated quickly.

By the time they gathered in Amman that Sunday, the Jordanian prime minister had shut down schools, mosques, churches, restaurants, and ― crucially ― airports, Hobscheid said. The message from the local Fulbright officials was more straightforward than the global directive: Airports are closing in 36 hours. Leave now.

Jordan Fulbrighters gathered outside after the meeting, discussing their options. While they were told to leave, flights were climbing upwards of $5,000, they said. Even with the promise of State Department reimbursement, some scholars felt that they were being asked to do the impossible, according to Thaer Husien, a 28-year-old another grantee in the English Teaching Assistant program.

“To be inelegant about it, it was basically ‘Are we screwed’ with a question mark, or ‘Are we screwed’ with a period,” he said. A few hours after the meeting, Husien learned that Qatar Airways was opening up more commercial flights. He packed up his things and was at the airport by noon the next day.

Hobscheid initially decided to stay. Jordan seemed to be taking aggressive measures to handle the situation, and she wanted to see how the crisis might resolve itself by the end of her grant term in June.

“Naively, I was thinking, ’Maybe I can still travel afterwards,’” she said.

Based on the number of cases in Jordan, it felt less risky than returning to the United States. But as Jordan went into full lockdown, she decided she wanted to be closer to her family during this stressful period. When she received notice from Fulbright that the U.S. Embassy in Jordan was arranging a commercial flight on March 27, she knew this was her best chance to go.

In a “mad rush,” she packed up her things, unable to really say goodbye to anyone in Jordan, where the government was going as far as incarcerating people who violated the quarantine, Hobscheid said.

Fulbright offered to reimburse plane tickets back to the U.S. ― which were expensive in many cases, since they were booked last minute as airports and borders closed and demand surged.

Grantees will also be paid their stipends through the end of June, according to an email to HuffPost from a State Department official. But the amount of that stipend varies depending on the host country, where the cost of living is often much lower than in the U.S., and many Fulbrighters had signed contracts that promised funding for additional months, with some extending as far as December.

The State Department official also told HuffPost that for Fulbrighters who are unable to travel home due to restrictions, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is committed to supporting them while they shelter in place.

Now, many Fulbrighters are returning — unemployed and uninsured — to an economy and health care system ravaged by a deadly virus. There was no reimbursement offered to grantees who needed to pay for lodging to quarantine away from vulnerable family members, for example.

“The relocation costs were, for many of us, way larger than the last stipend they were going to give us,” said Cory Gray, 31, a grantee who recently returned to San Francisco from Brazil. Gray was studying dance and identity in Brazil, and has little opportunity to earn income teaching dance as she once did in the Bay Area, which is under a strict shelter-in-place order until at least May 3.

Confusion And Mixed Messages

As the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs encouraged Fulbright grantees worldwide to return to the U.S., Fulbright commission or embassy officials in host countries interpreted those communications differently.

Sean Hayward, a 28-year-old grantee studying Javanese music in Indonesia, was told in an email that if he left “as is required” he would continue to receive his grant payments through the end of June. He interpreted that as meaning he might lose his stipend if he stayed in Indonesia, even though the State Department guaranteed funding continued through June 30, regardless of whether grantees chose to remain in their host countries.

His rent in Indonesia was paid through the end of October, when his grant was scheduled to end, and he had already completed coursework for his Ph.D. from California Institute of the Arts. Hayward didn’t have plans to return to the U.S., but it didn’t feel like Fulbright was giving him a choice.

Hayward asked for clarification, but the Indonesian commission had little information from the State Department regarding the security of his visa and stipend.

The commission’s executive director, Alan Feinstein, told Hayward in a March 20 email that he would inquire about some of his specific questions, “but the bottom line here really is we want you to leave for your own health and safety.”

(Photo: ozgurdonmaz via Getty Images)
(Photo: ozgurdonmaz via Getty Images)

Hayward said he does not blame the commission but feels that communications from the State Department to individual embassies and commissions were unclear.

It wasn’t until he was in the airport in Japan, already en route to his 14-day quarantine at an Airbnb in California, that Hayward learned that Indonesia’s Ministry of Research and Technology would support Fulbrighters’ visas. On April 2, Hayward returned to Indonesia, out $3,000 for what he says was a pointless and hazardous trip to the United States.

Fulbrighters in Brazil and Paraguay, who began their programs in February, told HuffPost that they felt frustrated that they are only getting a few months of support despite signing contracts for nine months.

“They were willing to accommodate you if you were stuck, but once you get back to the U.S., it felt kind of like, ‘We’re washing our hands of this situation,’” said Mitchell Collins, a 23-year-old teaching assistant in Paraguay.

Was Coming Home The Safest Option?

While the State Department brought Fulbright grantees home ostensibly to keep them safe from a global pandemic, grantees arriving home were not confident that was the safest decision.

Sunny Huang, who was on a grant in Taiwan, decided to stay there because of how effectively the country has handled the pandemic. In Jordan, grantees with medical expertise met the instructions to travel home with skepticism during the March 15 meeting, according to people in attendance. For them and many others, traveling felt more risky than sheltering in place.

Many of the grantees returning home said that U.S. airport screenings just involved a brief questionnaire about symptoms and often neglected to take their temperature, despite long travel and layovers in several different countries.

“In Malta, they took my temperature to go into a grocery store,” said Emma Alquist, 24, a grantee who had been working in secondary schools and volunteering with asylum seekers on the island. Coming back to the U.S., she said, “was weird. I was anticipating a bit more caution.”

Husien and another Jordan grantee said customs officials questioned them more thoroughly about their time spent in Jordan and the Middle East than about potential exposure to the virus. One Jordan grantee, who asked not to be named, did have her temperature taken and received instructions to self-quarantine upon reentry to the U.S. in New York. She got sick a few days after arrival and believes she likely picked up the virus in transit.

As much as they understand the difficult decision the State Department made, many Fulbrighters are frustrated with the vagueness of how those decisions were reached and communicated to them.

Some, like Hayward, felt misled. Others felt abandoned.

“I fully support the purpose of the Fulbright program,” said Collins, who had just begun his program in February. “I love the fact that I even got to do the little that I did.”

“It’s just how things have been handled on the top level. It doesn’t make sense to us, the people who are facing the consequences of it,” he added. “The lack of transparency is really frustrating on top of everything that we’re dealing with.”


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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.