Reprinted from U.S. Department of State Website

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, thank you very, very much, Pat. And it's a great pleasure for me to be here this afternoon to see so many, many good friends here as well. I won't even start to go around the room, but a special welcome to Harriet, to have you back here, and, of course, my dear old friend, Wilma. We have been through a few things over the years. And it's a great pleasure to have you back here today, General, and see all my Pentagon friends. It's good to be home -- (applause) -- or invite you to my home for the moment.

But it's a pleasure to have so many of our Department of Defense friends here -- veterans, those from the academies, institutions I know well, organizations I know well, universities in our military education system that I know so well -- and especially on this particular occasion when we are here to celebrate the achievements of Fulbright scholars, who have had a connection with the military, and to do so in the name of a wonderful man, Harrison H. Schmitt, and to name the award after him, the Harrison H. Schmitt Leadership Award.

And I want to tell you that in honoring Harrison Schmitt with this name and those who will receive the award, we honor a man who has served his country in so many important ways, as a legislator, and as an astronaut, who took his Fulbright experience where no other Fulbrighter has ever gone before -- (laughter) -- all the way to the moon, and more pleasantly, all the way back as well. (Laughter)

Few embody the American spirit that we want to present to the world as completely as Dr. Schmitt. As a senator, as a scientist, as a teacher, as a businessman, he has made extraordinary contributions to his fellow Americans, to his nation and to human knowledge.

Dr. Schmitt, we have created this award in recognition of the very inspirational role that you have played in public service and in international exchanges. We hope that this award will motivate future leaders to venture to distant lands, or even to the stars, in the spirit of adventure and understanding. Thank you for allowing us to use your name, sir.

DR. SCHMITT: Thank you.

(Applause.)

SECRETARY POWELL: And it is just such a sense of adventure and insatiable interest in other lands and people that defines our award winners, Raymond M. Jefferson and Jason A. Santamaria.

As a Fulbright Fellow in Singapore, Ray Jefferson analyzed leadership and entrepreneurial practices. He also worked with physically challenged students to help them reach their full potential.

Not only was he working with leaders who were already on their way to becoming better leaders, but he reached down and back and across to help challenged students who didn't know what they might be capable of doing until someone like a Ray Jefferson entered their lives.

Stateside, he was a White House Fellow, and Ray is currently Deputy Director of Hawaii's Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism.

Jason spent his Fulbright year in Venezuela studying trade relations between our two countries. He has also been a force to be reckoned with in Fulbright fundraising circles. And Jason has written an upcoming book called, Marine Corps Way: Using Maneuver Warfare to Lead a Winning Organization.

I cannot wait for it to be out later this fall and purchase my copy unless, Jason, you choose to send me one free. (Laughter.) As a fellow author, I can tell you, "Never fall for that, make them pay full price. No Amazon.com or any of that stuff. Full price." (Laughter.)

We're so pleased that these two very distinguished leaders will be the first recipients, and I ask you to recognize them now.

(Applause.)

By creating the Harrison H. Schmitt Award, we pay tribute to a bold idea that has become America's flagship program for international exchange. Fulbright Fellowships were a direct outgrowth of the role this country inherited some 50 years ago. A world wasted by war looked to the United States for leadership and we responded with creativity, with know-how, and with renewed resolve to promote lasting peace among citizens of every creed, every country and of every continent.

Fortunately, some far-sighted people in the State Department and Congress understood that no matter how influential the United States grew, no matter how it tried to address all of the world's problems, it could not do so alone. These leaders recognize that partnerships built upon the free exchange of people and ideas were absolutely essential. And years later, in our much changed 21st Century world, partnerships and people-to-people exchanges are even more crucial.

Today, our international community, as this audience knows all so well, is more interdependent than ever before, and the challenges of a globalized world cannot be addressed by any country acting alone. Our rising leaders in the Fulbright program establish relationships with counterparts abroad that will form the foundation of successful and mutually beneficial partnerships in the years ahead.

I was not a Fulbright scholar, but I do know something about the power of exchange programs. Like Ray, I was once a White House Fellow, a few years earlier than Ray. (Laughter.) In fact, quite a few years earlier than Ray. It was in the early 1970s. I was a White House Fellow in 1972 to 1973. I was a lieutenant colonel of Infantry. I had recently returned from my second tour in Vietnam, just finished graduate school and was entering a new phase of my career as an infantry officer from lieutenant colonel, and now I am going as a lieutenant colonel into my first assignment in the Pentagon.

And it was during that time that I was selected to be a White House Fellow. And there I was in the early '70s, just coming out of Vietnam, in the depths of the Cold War. Communism seems to be the rising system. We're having troubles in our own country with anti-war movements and race relations and drug problems.

But the Army and the White House Fellows Program invested in me, and allowed me to go out and see this world, this world that belonged to my enemy. They sent me to Siberia. And as a lieutenant colonel in 1972, I was able to go from Habarov across all of Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Express to Irkutsk, and from Irkutsk to Moscow, from Moscow to Poland, from Poland to Bulgaria.

And then some eight months later they sent me back in that direction, but this time to China, the People's Republic of China, just coming out of the Cultural Revolution, as one of the first American officers to enter China since the communists took over in 1949. And it was quite an experience for this young lieutenant colonel to see both the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic at that time.

And separated by six months difference, I was at a place of conflict and tension between Russia and China, along the Amur River in Northern China. And I looked across the river into Russia and had looked back from that same place into China just six months earlier. Remarkable experience.

It was an experience that I did not know at that time the influence it would have in my life, but I left that experience seeing both China and Russia impressed by the vitality of those countries, impressed by the people that I met, but also realizing that it was a system that could not last in the kind of world we were heading into.

And when I then became more senior, and as National Security Advisor to a president, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to two presidents, and now as Secretary of State, those early experiences in that kind of an international exchange program were so vital and so important in allowing me to understand the kind of world that I would be responsible for in later years.

I am sure that Ray and Jason have experienced much the same kind of experience in their lives, as they have walked and met with people from other lands and other places.

More than ever, we need to interact with people around the world. More than ever, we need economists to interchange with each other, military officers to change views with, not only other military officers from other nations but other leaders, whether they be politicians, scientists, economists, what have you, all mixing it up, so that we broaden the perspective of all parties. And the Fulbright program, more so than any other program, provides an ideal backdrop for these kinds of connections, these kinds of interchanges to take place and to flourish.

As a former military man, I would like to take this occasion to say that it is fitting that as thousands of our men and women serve far away from home on the frontiers of freedom today, the first two recipients represent these wonderful men and women, both of them having served in the Armed Forces of the United States.

That said, more work must still be done to ensure that our men and women in uniform are taking their place next to scholars and diplomats, journalists and aid workers, in the Fulbright program. So I challenge all of you here present, especially our military academy administrators, to create conditions whereby our most deserving students, ROTC graduates, veterans and reservists have the opportunity to become Fulbright Fellows.

I would never have been a White House Fellow if I had just been sitting around taking notice of what was going on. Somebody came and sought me out in my leadership environment in the Pentagon. MILPERCEN, Military Personnel Center, Infantry Branch, called me and said, "Apply."

I said, "I don't even know what it is. I don't want to." And they said, "We didn't ask you if you wanted to." (Laughter.) "Don't take this volunteer army too seriously, Lieutenant Colonel Powell. Apply." And I was encouraged and finally directed to apply. And it was a throwaway for me. I spent a weekend filling out the application, and nine months later I was in Russia. (Laughter.)

We need you academy experts and academy administrators, we need those of you who are senior officers, who are bringing along that next generation of leadership in your services to take advantage of opportunities such as the Fulbright Scholars Program.

I also call on our interagency colleagues to cultivate potential Fulbright scholars everywhere you go. Talk about the program. And as you do, always keep in mind that the Fulbright program is part and parcel of our foreign policy and military policy tool kit.

As Secretary, I can attest to the importance of bringing all of our public diplomacy, all of our public diplomacy tools to bear, as we represent the interest of the American people on the international stage. I can also tell you that nothing that we do matters quite as much as digging deep in our organizations to identify leaders and equip them to deal with the challenges of the 21st century.

The dawn of the new century has heightened the demand for dialogue, the demand for diplomacy, and I think this program is an important adjunct to all of our efforts.

I salute the creation of the Harrison H. Schmitt Award. It will serve as a catalyst for attracting Americans from every sector of society to the Fulbright program, and indeed, to all of our exchange programs.

I salute Ray Jefferson and Jason Santamaria for the service that they have given to the United States, and especially for the service they will yet render.

And I salute Fulbright scholars -- past, present and future -- for acting as goodwill ambassadors for our country as we advance the cause of peace, prosperity and freedom across the globe.

And, Harrison, if you are ready, I would ask you now to join me in presenting Ray and Jason with the First Harrison H. Schmitt Awards. Thank you.

 
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