Renee Knake Jefferson speaks to government officials and diplomats at the Australian Embassy.
Oct. 18, 2024 – University of Houston Law Center Professor Renee Knake Jefferson was invited to give remarks on Wednesday to diplomats at the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. The event celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Australian American Fulbright Commission.
“It’s important for a milestone like a 75th anniversary to remember those whose work paved the way. Among the earliest Australian Fulbright recipients was a woman named Mercy Dickenson, blind from the age of 7, who sailed across the Pacific to study at Hunter College in New York, and take back new techniques for teaching blind children. Imagine her bravery. The Fulbright scholars are a community of similarly impressive stories, each individual relationship strengthening the collective bond between Australia and the United States,” said Jefferson.
Australian Embassy in Washinton, DC
Renee Knake Jefferson and Varuni Kulasekera, Executive Director of the Australian American Fulbright Commission
Renee Knake Jefferson and husband, retired Texas Supreme Court Justice Wallace B. Jefferson
Jefferson is the Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at UHLC. She was awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in 2019.
“I’m honored that my academic research contributed to the ongoing collaboration and friendship between Australia and the United States, and I look forward to what the next 75 years will bring,” Jefferson added.
While in Australia, she completed the research for her book Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis, published in January 2024.
The first Australian scholars, 27 of them, including two women, from seventeen research fields were awarded placements at US universities in 1950. The first Americans (23 men and, again, two women) went to Australia in 1951. Nearly 6,000 scholars have since been awarded Fulbright scholarships for exchanges between the US and Australia.
The Fulbright program was founded by Senator William Fulbright in 1946, and Australia was one of the first countries to join. Fulbright said at the time, “Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the huma nizing of international relations.”
The Program was originally funded with an initial sum of $5.8 million, “representing U.S. government credits acquired in Australia from the sale of surplus war materials.”
