Georgetown University

Washington, D.C.-- Laura Tulchin (C’09) of Larchmont, N.Y., was selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board to receive a Fulbright award to Brazil. There, she will study the use of racial quotas in admissions procedures by public Brazilian universities and analyze their ability to counter discrimination.

“Brazil’s economic and political growth, including its recent discovery of a new oil field, has transformed it into a regional power,” Tulchin wrote in her application. “As the country prepares to assume a global role, it is vital that the ongoing effects of decades of discrimination against darker-skinned Brazilians, long recognized as a major social ill, be efficiently addressed. The widespread implementation of racial quotes, especially in higher education, has been an attempt to do this.”

In 2007, Tulchin traveled to Brazil for seven weeks of undergraduate study abroad. At Georgetown, she participated in the Georgetown Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, working as a research assistant for Brazilian studies professor Vivaldo Santos.

"What made teaching Laura so enjoyable was that she never accepts easy answers; she always wants to grapple with the complex ways in which issues like class and race wind up being simplified when they are brought into institutional settings," wrote Jason Potts, assistant professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University, in his recommendation letter. "I know that her interest in the problems surrounding education and opportunity are longstanding and that she will make an outstanding representative of the United States in Brazil."

Congress established the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for the purposes of supervising the Fulbright Program and certain programs authorized by the Fulbright-Hays Act and for the purpose of selecting students, scholars, teachers, trainees and other persons to participate in the educational exchange programs. Appointed by the president of the United States, the 12-member Board meets quarterly in Washington. The Board maintains a close relationship with both the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. Department of State and the executive directors of all the binational Fulbright Commissions. Since its inception more than 30 years ago, nearly 300,000 Fulbrighters have participated in the program. More information is available here: http://fulbright.state.gov/.

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