WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 6, 2009) – The Fulbright Association announced today that it has selected poet Rita Dove, composer Philip Glass, educator and civil rights activist John D. Maguire, and entrepreneur Ruth M. Owades to receive the 2009 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal on May 12 in Washington, D.C. 

            Speakers at the event include Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher university professor and director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University; Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, founder and CEO of Strategic Investment Group; and Howard H. Stevenson, Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation professor of business administration at Harvard University and chairman of the Harvard Business Publishing Company board.  Fulbright alumnus Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce of the State University of New York, will serve as the evening’s master of ceremonies.

             The Fulbright Association awards Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medals biennially to Fulbright Program alumni whose career accomplishments and civic and educational contributions are judged to have expanded the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy, and perception. 

            “These distinguished Fulbright alumni have exhibited extraordinary leadership in their chosen fields and enriched the lives of their communities and our country through their educational, civic, and philanthropic activities,” said Suzanne E. Siskel, Fulbright Association president.

            The Fulbright Association is a private, nonprofit organization of Fulbright alumni and friends committed to advancing international education and people-to-people diplomacy.  It has 46 chapters throughout the United States and collaborates with more than 70 sister Fulbright alumni organizations abroad.  The Fulbright Association inaugurated the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal in 2000 to recognize the important role Fulbright grantees have had in creating a better future for communities throughout the world. 

            Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal recipients in 2000 were Arlene Alda, children’s book author and photographer; Barbara Knowles Debs, former president of Manhattanville College and the New York Historical Society; and Richard A. Debs, founding president of Morgan Stanley International.  In 2002, Jean-Pierre Garnier, former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline; Thomas R. Pickering, former under secretary of state for political affairs; and Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University, received medals.  In 2005, medal recipients were Rita E. Hauser, president of the Hauser Foundation; John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, president and CEO of Strategic Investment Group.  In 2007, the medal was awarded to Craig R. Barrett, chairman of the board of Intel Corporation, historian John Hope Franklin, and Shirley Strum Kenny, president of Stony Brook University.  All recipients are Fulbright alumni. 

            The Fulbright Program is an international educational and cultural exchange initiative administered by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.  It was created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.  There are Fulbright exchanges between the United States and more than 150 other countries.  There are more than 275,000 Fulbright alumni throughout the world.

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