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| David Cunliffe |
A Fulbright Graduate Student scholarship took David to
Cambridge, Mass., where he attended Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Business. During David's time in the US, he worked
on the Senate campaign of Edward Kennedy (D.,Mass) and graduated in the
to 10 percent of his class. David is now the Labour MP representing the
Auckland electorate of Titirangi.
The following are the speech notes from when David appeared
as the keynote speaker for the Fulbright New Zealand Asia-Pacific Conference
in March 2001.
Introduction
A yellow Ryder rental truck pulled off the beltway and onto the I 95
North. In it were two nervous Kiwis newly liberated from the comfortable
embrace of the foreign service and two equally nervous Amazon parrots.
Behind this risky adventure stood two mentors a Northern gentleman and
a Southern gentleman. Both believed in the value of that Ryder truck’s
expedition. Today I’m going to tell you why.
May I add my welcome to New Zealand and this Asia-Pacific Fulbright
Conference. I hope you will forgive me if I begin my reflections on the
Fulbright experience at a personal level, what we did, how it felt, and
where it led us.
I will then reflect on the broader value of the Fulbright programme
to all of us: its contribution to the NZ/US relationship; the importance
of American ideas to NZ; and the growing necessity of international education.
I hope that in this there will be echoes for each country represented
here.
And at the end, I’ll explain about the two old gents who stood behind
the Ryder truck.
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| Hometown |
Te Aroha, New Zealand |
| Award |
Fulbright
Graduate Student Award (1994) |
| Research topic |
Masters in Public Administration |
| Place of study |
Harvard University - Cambridge, MA,
USA |
|
Fulbright:
A personal view