Message to the Congress Transmitting the Annual Report on the International Educational and Cultural Exchange Program.

To the Congress of the United States:

I transmit herewith the annual report on the international educational and cultural exchange program conducted during the Fiscal Year 1969 under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (Public Law 87-256, the Fulbright-Hays Act ).

This program, in Fiscal Year 1969, exchanged more than 6,500 teachers, scholars, students and distinguished leaders between the United States and 132 countries and territories. More than 2,000 of these were leaders, potential leaders and professionals from other lands who came to observe and study the United States, its people and institutions. Cumulatively, from 1949 through 1969, 132,380 United States and foreign grantees have been exchanged under this State Department program.

This exchange has directly contributed to the achievement of our foreign policy objectives. Observing and working with colleagues here on mutual problems, our visitors have established personal and institutional relationships which persist through the years. They have realized what they have in common with us, as well as our differences. Together with American grantees studying and teaching abroad, they have contributed greatly to the store of knowledge and understanding of our respective cultures, penetrating below the surface news and impressions of the mass media.

This report for the Fiscal Year 1969 educational and cultural exchange program is largely devoted to an aspect of the program too often overlooked-that is, the extraordinary extent to which it receives the cooperation and assistance, including financial assistance, from United States private groups, private individuals, private educational institutions and business corporations. This private cooperation not only indicates the high level of citizen interest in exchange but gives the program its essential character and effectiveness.

Perhaps in no other way have the American people made so direct a contribution to our foreign policy objectives for the 1970s which I defined in my February 18 message to Congress.

I commend this report to the thoughtful attention of the Congress.

RICHARD NIXON

The White House

June 15, 1970