At the beginning of October, I submitted a Fulbright grant proposal to teach English in Cambodia. Although I believe my application is still under review, I can’t help but wonder if it’s already been disqualified, simply because I refused to censor it. During the application process, I never imagined my adviser would spend an entire day debating whether we needed to strip certain words from our applications before submitting them. But that’s exactly what happened.
My concerns of censorship took on new meaning after reading Sen. Ted Cruz’s 43-page document “DEI: Division, Extremism, and Ideology: How the Biden-Harris NSF Administration Politicized Science,” which spells out exactly which words applications can now be punished for using. This list includes words like women, disability and equality — words that appear throughout my application — on Cruz’s list of “disqualifying” terms. Most of my teaching experience involves working with children with disabilities and creating inclusive classrooms, so censoring my application would have been nearly impossible. And because Fulbright is a federally funded program, even mentioning these words puts applicants at risk for being flagged under a new, unauthorized review process.
Cruz’s document blames the Biden-Harris administration and seeks to eliminate DEI-related language from all federal grants. But deeper than that, it aims to silence students and researchers whose work challenges conservative ideology about women, people of color and minority groups. He writes:
“DEI research permeates all levels of the education system. The Biden-Harris NSF has awarded grants to applicants trying to influence every level of science education—from pre-kindergarten to post-graduate doctoral studies. These 3,483 projects were often based on neo-Marxist theories that identified merit by physical or ethnic attributes, not one’s talent, work ethic, or intellectual curiosity.”
The final pages of Cruz’s document list 694 “disqualifying” terms, language that now determines the fate of government grants under the Trump administration, including my Fulbright application.
In May 2025, the entire Fulbright board resigned. In their joint statement, published on Substack, they cite the Trump administration’s takeover of the program as the reason for their resignation. Their statement says the current administration’s actions “are antithetical to the Fulbright mission and the values, including free speech and academic freedom, that Congress specified in the statute.” Their statement continues by reminding readers that since 1946, Fulbright’s proud legacy has always depended on “the integrity of the program’s selection process based on merit, not ideology, and its insulation from political interference.” But now, “that integrity is now undermined.”
The board’s collective resignation marks the collapse of Fulbright’s nonpartisan foundation; it is a clear violation of the First Amendment and the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961. This implosion of leadership reveals the depth of the underlying problem and raises serious concerns about whether previously awarded grants were targeted because of political ideology.
The Trump administration denied over 1,200 Fulbright grants for the 2025-26 cycle, many of which had already been approved before being overturned. For the first time in the program’s history, applicants were subjected to a secondary, unauthorized review process, after review committees had already selected the grantees. According to multiple reports, this review process was not conducted by educators or scholars, but by an AI model programmed to flag Cruz’s 694 banned terms. In other words, years of work, service, research, and teaching experience were overridden by an algorithm scanning for words stripped of their context. This isn’t just the free-speech violation the board warned about. It represents a fundamental breakdown of Fulbright’s selection process: grants earned through merit were rescinded because of an applicant’s vocabulary, not their qualifications.
Censorship undermines intellectual merit, collaboration and the very purpose of education. What happens to our classrooms, research and international relationships when words themselves become disqualifying? I chose not to censor my Fulbright application. Deep down, I knew I never would. In a world that keeps telling me to be quiet about the things I care about, I’ll be the loudest person in the room, and I hope you will too.
Kaitlyn Hemberger is a senior at Rollins College, originally from Las Vegas. She majors in English and minors in Psychology.
