“When I was an undergraduate in a journalism program in Skopje (capital of the Republic of North Macedonia), a Fullbright scholar came to teach reporting. She was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and she was just wonderful,” said Katerina Spasovska, associate professor of communications at WCU. “She kind of gave me a glimpse of what I could do.”
THE Fullbright Program was established by a U.S. senator from Arkansas, J. William Fullbright, in 1946.
Fullbright, who would chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 15 years at the start of the Cold War, wanted to promote a two-way cultural and intellectual exchange in the hope that it would also improve relations between the United States and countries around the world.
Administered by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fullbright Program awards nearly 8,000 scholarships and grants to artists, students, professionals and teachers like Spasovska each year.
In fiscal year 2020, total funding for the program was set at $439.7 million, the majority of which, more than $270 million, came from the Department of State. Foreign partner countries have contributed nearly $100 million in direct and in-kind support. Contributions from the U.S. private sector added another $60 million, and the U.S. Department of Education contributed $8 million.
The program recognizes Senator Fullbright’s complex legacy: while advocating greater understanding among people of diverse nations around the world, he promoted segregationist ideals at home, including opposition to racial integration in places public and in educational establishments.
However, the program’s results over the past 77 years speak for themselves. Among the more than 400,000 Fullbright Scholars in 165 countries are 41 heads of state, 62 Nobel Prize winners, and 89 Pulitzer Prize winners.
The application process is extremely competitive.
In February, Spasovska will travel to the small Balkan nation of Kosovo for five months.
Home to nearly 2 million people, Kosovo is a landlocked country about half the size of New Jersey and bordered by Albania and former Yugoslav territories, including Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. The overwhelming majority of Kosovo’s population is of Albanian origin, practices Islam, and enjoys a relatively high quality of life, similar to that of other countries in the region.
Kosovo was a nominally autonomous province of Yugoslavia from 1945 to the 1980s, but as Yugoslavia began to divide after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a majority Christian nation, in 1990.
Shortly thereafter, Serbian forces began engaging in a brutal repression of the Kosovar independence movement, committing massacres, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.
Called the Kosovo War, the conflict pitted Serbia and Montenegro – still calling themselves Yugoslavia – against the Kosovo Liberation Army. In 1999, NATO airstrikes ended the fighting, but not before between 6,000 and 12,000 Kosovars were left in more than 500 mass graves, according to one report. United Nations report from 1999.
Serbia still claims Kosovo as its own, but 102 of the 193 United Nations member states recognize Kosovo’s status as a sovereign nation. The United States officially recognized it in 2008.
Serbia and Kosovo are now seeking to join the European Union, but Serbia’s refusal to recognize Kosovo, as well as the alleged repression of ethnic Serbs in the northern part of the country closest to Serbia, must end, according to the president of the EU. Ursula von der Leyen.
The United States is leading a multinational military presence based in southeastern Kosovo as tensions remain high between the two countries, although Spasovska says she believes Kosovo is safe — at least for now.
“In our region, a ‘tense’ situation can arise in 15 minutes and ease the next day, so it’s a rather fluid situation,” Spasovska said.
Originally from Macedonia, Spasovska worked as a journalist in that country and the Balkans, just as Yugoslavia was collapsing.
She began by freelancing, including television and radio work, and went on to earn her master’s degree in 2000 from one of the world’s top journalism schools, the University of Missouri.
After a stint in the media development program at the U.S. Agency for International Development, she worked as editor of an Albanian-language political magazine started by her husband, also a journalist. In 2007, Spasovska began her doctoral studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
In Kosovo, Spasovska will be a member of the mass communications faculty of a private university, teaching two undergraduate courses and one master’s course.
Spasovska will also conduct research on media development in Southeast Europe, in collaboration with journalists working there; This is not a new subject for her.
“The topic of my thesis was how journalists in Macedonia define professional journalism, and what I learned from this thesis is that the pressures on young journalists, especially media journalists “A/V, are much bigger and heavier than among the older, more established names,” Spasovska said. “But at the same time, the most established names were also linked to political elites. I want to see how the situation has changed in Macedonia, how has the situation changed in Albania, and let’s see what is happening there, in Kosovo.”
Another interesting facet of the media landscape in Kosovo is that since the coronavirus pandemic, print media has largely gone the way of the dinosaur in favor of digital media.
Kosovo also has a relatively young population, which may be a factor in digital news consumption. According to CIA World Intelligence Digest , the median age there was 30.5 years in 2020, giving it a rank of 120 out of 227 nations. Monaco, the oldest country in the world, has a median age of 55.4 years, compared to the United States, ranked 61st with a median age of 38.5 years.
“They have a lot of young people, so in terms of how young people use and access information, this is probably a channel that will emerge as a development,” Spasovska said. “But what does this mean for journalists? Because the way you reach audiences in traditional media and the way you reach them online is very different.
And this is not the only parallel between the journalism of southeastern Europe and that of the United States. Some of Spasovska’s research could reveal important omens in this regard.
“The American media also has a problem like the American media, which is the loss of trust and credibility,” she said. “What I could bring to the table is, here are the reasons why and how this affects the media there.”
Another significant parallel is the concept of the “information desert”. Often rural, information deserts are places where no legitimate sources of information exist. A Study 2022 According to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, one-fifth of Americans live in an information desert or in a community at risk of becoming one.
Around the same time as the Northwestern study, The Washington Post published an article claiming that every week, two newspapers in the United States close and are not replaced. Numerous studies suggest that when a community becomes an information desert, government transparency decreases and the cost of governance – borne by taxpayers – increases.
“At least in Macedonia – I don’t know if it’s true in Kosovo – what happens most of the time is that the bureau covers the world with translated information from other media, like Associated Press or Reuters. But local stories are missing,” Spasovska said. “They will cover politics from Skopje, the capital, but the rest of the country will be ignored. Nobody is covering this. I come from Eastern Macedonia. There is no good TV or radio channel that covers the eastern region of Macedonia. And we are talking about a country with almost 2 million inhabitants.
While Spasovska’s work may add a little more luster to WCU’s academic reputation, she is far from the first Catamount to receive a Fullbright.
Ingrid Bego, an associate professor of political science at WCU and a native of Albania, currently serves as director of the Office of National and International Student Grants and student representative on the Fullbright campus. Alongside Wes Milner, director of global engagement, Bego hopes to boost future WCU Fullbrighters by building institutional support for applicants, who may be current students, instructors or even alumni.
Ingrid Bégo
Bego told the Smoky Mountain News that in recent years there have been about four student applicants each year, with some entering the semi-finalist phase of the process.
Most recently, Associate Head of Physical Therapy Department John Carzoli traveled to Bolivia to complete his Fullbright Project. Turner Goins, distinguished professor at the College of Health and Human Services, embarked on a trip to New Zealand. Yanjun Yan, associate professor of engineering, visited Bulgaria.
“I believe it is important to dedicate more time and resources to strengthening WCU’s Fulbright footprint because of Fulbright’s mission to advance knowledge in communities and improve lives around the world “, said Bego. “I think it’s important that we bring the world to WCU, but I think it’s just as important to introduce the world to what we have to offer here in Western North Carolina. We have so much to give not only within the walls of the university but also in our collaborations and work in the community. The Fulbright can make all of this possible, building lasting connections between our people here in Western North Carolina and people elsewhere.
Bego plans to host a “Fullbright Day” at WCU when applications open in April, to raise awareness of the program among students and faculty. For more information about the Fullbright program, visit fr.fulbrightonline.org .