Professor Geoff Scott Receives Fulbright Scholar Grant

Carlisle, PA (March 29, 2004) — Penn State Dickinson School of Law Professor Geoffrey R. Scott has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research into the international protection of cultural and ethnographic properties in Asia at the Doshisha University Faculty of Law in Kyoto, Japan, during the 2004-2005 academic year, according to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Scott, who focuses his scholarly and teaching interests on intellectual property and on the intersection of the worlds of artistic and scientific expression and the law, has been heavily immersed in researching the treatment of cultural properties in Western Europe and is looking forward to expanding his interest in Japan and Asia.

“Japan has a system whereby it purports to protect living cultural treasures and a concomitant process through which it encourages the perpetuation of ethnographic information through its transmission to future generations. My desire is to conduct competent, responsible and professional qualitative research into the policies, the objectives and the practices of the Japanese system as well as the inchoate and unique cultural perspectives antecedent to the legislation,” explained Scott.

“The goal is to analyze, understand and communicate the ideas and ideals of Japan's model so that they might be properly integrated into a broader world scheme of responsible protection of cultural property,” Scott said.

Scott is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries for the 2004-2005 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

The Fulbright Program, America 's flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. During its 57 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have studied, taught or done research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the U.S.

Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields. Among thousands of prominent Fulbright Scholar alumni are Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning columnist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation.