J. William Fulbright

For more information on James William Fulbright, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Sumner, Missouri, 9 Apr. 1905; d. 9 Feb. 1995) US; Senator from Arkansas 1945 – 74, Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 1959 – 74 Fulbright took a BA at the University of Arkansas, an LLB at George Washington University, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He taught law at George Washington University and the University of Arkansas and became president of the University of Arkansas in 1939. In 1942 he was elected to the House of Representatives. In 1944 he was elected to the Senate and served as Senator from Arkansas for the next thirty years.

His interests lay very largely in the field of foreign affairs. In 1946 he sponsored the bill which created the international educational exchange programme which bore his name. He supported the general lines of American foreign policy during the Cold War, though he emphasized the importance of economic and cultural issues as well as military and political containment. In 1959 he became chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He supported American policy in Vietnam in the early 1960s and in 1964 he sponsored the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave broad powers to the President in his conduct of the war in Vietnam. In 1965 he began to question American policy in Vietnam and in 1966 he held hearings on the war in Vietnam before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The hearings provided a major focus for the expression of opposition to the war in Vietnam and he became increasingly marked as a leading dissenter with regard to American policy in Vietnam. His position on Vietnam led him to clash with his fellow Southerner, President Johnson. After the 1968 election Fulbright encouraged President Nixon to negotiate an end to American involvement in Vietnam.

On domestic matters Fulbright took the conservative standpoint of a Southern Democrat, especially on civil rights. He adopted this standpoint for reasons of political necessity as much as of conviction, since his intellectual bearing and haughty manner made him vulnerable in his bids for re-election in Arkansas, especially when he became a dissenter on Vietnam. In 1974 he was defeated in his final bid for re-election. Highly regarded as a scholar in politics, he was the author of many books on American foreign policy, such as The Arrogance of Power (1966).

James William Fulbright (1905-1995) was as educator and politician, who, while a United States senator, sponsored the Fulbright Act of 1946, providing funds for the exchange of students, scholars, and teachers between the United States and other countries.

William Fulbright, politician, lawyer, educator, and writer, was born on April 9, 1905, in Sumner, Missouri. He received his bachelor of arts degree at the University of Arkansas in 1925. Attending Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, he won a bachelor of arts degree (1928) and a master of arts degree (1931). During the following year's tour of Europe he developed his interest in international affairs. In 1932 he married Elizabeth Williams, and they had two daughters. George Washington University awarded Fulbright a bachelor of laws degree in 1934. After serving as a special attorney in the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1934-1935), he joined the faculties of George Washington University (1935-1936) and the University of Arkansas (1936-1939). Fulbright served as president of the University of Arkansas from 1939 to 1941.

A member of the Democratic party, Fulbright entered the U.S. Congress as an Arkansas representative in 1943 during World War II. That September the House of Representatives adopted the Fulbright resolution that favored creation of the "appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace," as well as United States participation in that effort. Fulbright entered the Senate in 1944 and gained much influence during his long tenure (1959-1974) as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

The Mutual Educational Exchange Program

The Mutual Educational Exchange Program, the Fulbright Act, was established by the U.S. Congress on August 1, 1946. This legislation authorized the use of U.S.-owned foreign currencies obtained from the sale of post-war surplus military equipment to finance grants for Americans to study, teach, or conduct research abroad, as well as for foreign citizens to study in the U.S. Since 1949 more than 100,000 nationals have participated in these exchange programs. It was later administered under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 which provides the legislative authority for the program. The main objective of this Act is "to enable the government of the United States to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries … and thus to assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United States and other countries of the world." The program operates in more than 135 countries and binational commissions were established by executive agreements in 43 countries. The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (BFS) in Washington, D.C. is composed of 12 educational and public leaders appointed by the President of the United States. It has statutory responsibility for the selection of all academic exchange grantees, the establishment of policies and procedures, and the supervision of the Fulbright Program worldwide.

Fulbright's Influence on Foreign Relations

Fulbright rose to prominence as a member of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee. As chairman of the former committee he conducted an investigation of the stock market in 1955. But Fulbright emerged primarily as one of the Senate's leading critics of American foreign policy, which he believed to be unnecessarily rigid and unproductive. In 1959, becoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright urged Congress to widen the scope of executive action and criticized the State Department for its rigidity in negotiations with the Communist powers. On domestic issues Fulbright remained moderate; on civil rights he was orthodox from a Southern point of view, yet without a trace of bigotry.

As a U.S. senator, Fulbright gained much influence during his long tenure (1959-1974) as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He became a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. By 1963 the problem of Vietnam was beginning to dominate America's external affairs. Long convinced that American fears of communism were being transformed into a positively antirevolutionary posture in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Fulbright attempted to curb the foreign interventions of the Lyndon Johnson administration. In his 1965 committee hearings on Johnson's decision to send troops into the Dominican Republic, he argued that the President's advisors had exaggerated Communist participation in the Dominican revolution. In 1966 Fulbright's committee conducted a search investigating U.S. involvement in Vietnam and held hearings on U.S. relations with China. Eventually he denied the President's right to send American forces into hostilities without congressional approval. Despite his attacks on the Vietnam War, Fulbright won his fifth term as senator in 1968 with a surprising 59 percent of the Arkansas vote.

During the mid-1960s Fulbright published his foreign policy views in Prospects for the West (1963), Old Myths and New Realities (1964), and The Arrogance of Power (1967). Running for his sixth term as senator in 1974, Fulbright was defeated in the Arkansas Democratic primary, and he resigned from the U.S. Senate at the end of the year.

U.S.-Polish Educational Exchanges

The Office for U.S.-Polish Educational Exchanges was established on March 22, 1990, after a binational agreement was signed between the governments of Poland and the United States, later known as the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission. The Commission's mission is to offer qualified Polish and American nationals the opportunity to exchange significant knowledge and educational experience in fields of consequence to the two countries. It also aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Polish-American relations and to broaden the means by which the two societies can further their understanding of each other's culture. The Polish government acknowledged the importance of the Commission's work by contributing to its funding. The Ministry of National Education provides the office space for the Commission, stipends for American students, salaries and housing for American scholars, travel costs for Polish grantees, and a two-week orientation program for U.S. grantees.

Polish Fulbright Alumni Association

In January 1992 the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission put notices in a number of Polish newspapers inviting former fulbrighters to contact the Commission. Some 160 alumni declared their wish to join the association. The Polish Fulbright Alumni Association (PFAA) and its Statute were registered by the Polish Court in February 1993. At its first meeting it was announced that Fulbright had been awarded Poland's highest award for a foreigner, the Order of Service of the Polish Republic. During a special ceremony at the Polish Embassy in Washington in December 1993, a delegation of PFAA and the Commission handed the Cross to Fulbright's wife, who represented her husband.

When Fulbright died in February of 1995, more than 250,000 scholarships had been awarded bearing his name.

Further Reading

The full-length biography of Fulbright is Haynes Johnson and Bernard M. Gwertzman, Fulbright: The Dissenter (1968). Karl E. Meyer, ed., Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (1963), contains a brief biography and a selection of Fulbright's public statements.

• Born: Apr. 9, 1905, Sumner, Mo.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, graduated, 1925; Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, 1928; George Washington University Law School, graduated, 1934
• Representative from Arkansas: 1943–45
• Senator from Arkansas: 1945–74
• Died: Feb. 9, 1995, Washington, D.C.

In 1964, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright led the effort to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution gave congressional support to President Lyndon B. Johnson to retaliate against any hostile military acts by North Vietnam. Fulbright assured other senators that the resolution was not an act of war and that President Johnson would consult with Congress before escalating the conflict. The next year, however, when President Johnson sent U.S. Marines to intervene in a rebellion within the Dominican Republic, Senator Fulbright became concerned that the President was not telling Congress and the public the full truth. If Johnson had exaggerated the situation in the Dominican Republic in order to justify sending troops, Fulbright wondered, might he be doing the same in Vietnam? In 1966, the Foreign Relations Committee launched a series of “educational” hearings on the Vietnam War, inviting both defenders and critics of the war to testify. The hearings began a national debate on the war and made Senator Fulbright one of the leading dissenters against American foreign policy.

See also Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Johnson, Lyndon B.

Sources

• Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

James William Fulbright served as a U.S. senator from Arkansas from 1945 to 1974. Fulbright played an important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His opposition to the Vietnam War and to unbridled presidential power in foreign affairs contributed to major shifts in the conduct of U.S. foreign relations.

Fulbright was born in Sumner, Missouri, on April 9, 1905, the son of a prosperous Arkansas businessman. He entered the University of Arkansas at the age of sixteen, and graduated in 1925. From 1925 to 1928, Fulbright attended Oxford University, in England, as a Rhodes scholar. This educational experience deepened his intellectual interests and provided a strong background for public life. He graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1934, and then taught at that school for two years. In 1936 he accepted a teaching position at the University of Arkansas. In 1939 he was appointed president of the University of Arkansas. At age thirty-four, he was the youngest college president in the United States. His tenure was short, however, as a new governor dismissed him in 1941.

Fulbright then turned his focus to politics. As a Democrat he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1942. In 1945 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. His previous time as a Rhodes scholar led him to sponsor the Fulbright Act of 1946, 22 U.S.C.A. §245 et seq., which awards scholarships to U.S. citizens for study and research abroad and to citizens from other nations for study in the United States. The establishment of the Fulbright Scholarship exchange program has proved to be an enduring legacy.

Fulbright, although personally a moderate on matters of race, believed in the 1950s that he needed to move to the right on race issues to protect his political future in Arkansas. This led him to sign the Southern Manifesto, a 1956 document signed by Southern senators and representatives that expressed their displeasure at the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I), 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), which struck down state-sponsored racially segregated public school systems, and Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II), 349 U.S. 294, 75 S. Ct. 753, 99 L. Ed. 1083 (1955), in which the Court directed that schools be desegregated with "all deliberate speed." The manifesto condemned these decisions as abuses of judicial power and approved of Southern resistance, by all legal means, to the demand for desegregation. Fulbright doomed his national political prospects by signing the manifesto.

In the 1950s Fulbright became a close friend and colleague of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas. In 1959 Johnson engineered Fulbright's elevation to chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Following the election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1960, Johnson, now vice president, urged Kennedy to appoint Fulbright secretary of state. Johnson's efforts failed, in large part because Fulbright had supported the Southern Manifesto and racial segregation.

During the Kennedy administration, Fulbright opposed the United States' indirect involvement in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, in which Cuban exiles made a futile attempt to overthrow the premier of Cuba, Fidel Castro. When the Vietnam War escalated under President Johnson, Fulbright became a consistent critic of presidential foreign policy. Fulbright had supported Johnson's Vietnam policy in the early part of the conflict, sponsoring the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-408, 78 Stat. 384, which allowed Johnson to wage war without seeking a congressional declaration. Within a year, however, Fulbright had become convinced that Johnson had misled him about events that had brought about the 1964 resolution. See also Cuban missile crisis.

Fulbright used the Foreign Relations Committee as a platform to criticize Vietnam policy. In January 1966 he held televised hearings on Vietnam. Leading opponents of the war testified that the conflict was going badly and that the United States did not have a legitimate role to play in Vietnam. Fulbright called Secretary of State Dean Rusk to appear three times during the hearings, repeatedly asking hard questions about U.S.-Asian policy. These hearings and additional ones in 1967 gave credibility to the antiwar movement and damaged the Johnson administration's credibility.

Skeptical about U.S. foreign policy and the attitudes of those who conduct it, Fulbright criticized policy makers in his books, Old Myths and New Realities (1964) and The Arrogance of Power (1967). His opposition continued during the Nixon administration.

In 1974 Fulbright was defeated by Dale L. Bumpers in the Democratic primary election. He served as a Washington lobbyist following his defeat, and remained active in the Fulbright Scholarship program.

Fulbright died in Washington, D.C., on February 9, 1995.

Quotes:

"In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects."

"The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute."

"In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine."

"We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes."

"It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policypolitical and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challengeor, in reality, to evade itby bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softnessthe softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas."

"To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliche. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant."

See more famous quotes by J. William Fulbright

James William Fulbright
United States Senator from Arkansas
In office January 3, 1945 – December 31, 1974
Preceded by	Hattie Caraway
Succeeded by	Dale Bumpers
Born	April 9, 1905(1905-04-09) Sumner, Missouri
Died	February 9, 1995 (aged 89) Washington, D.C.
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Williams, Harriet Mayor Fulbright
Alma mater	University of Arkansas Pembroke College (Oxford University) George Washington University
Religion	Disciple of Christ

James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905  – February 9, 1995) was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from 1945 to 1975.

Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist, supported the creation of the United Nations and opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee. He is remembered for his efforts to establish an international exchange program, which thereafter bore his name, the Fulbright Fellowships. Fulbright was the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Congressional career 2.1 House of Representatives 2.2 Senate 2.3 Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy 3 Final election and legacy 4 Fulbright Program 5 Sources 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Early years

An earlier portrait of Senator Fulbright.

Born in Sumner, Missouri, he earned a political science degree from the University of Arkansas in 1925, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He was elected president of the student body and a star 4-year player for the Razorback football team from 1921-24.^[1][2]

Fulbright later studied at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College graduating in 1928. He received his law degree from George Washington University Law School in 1934, and was admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C. and became an attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Fulbright was a lecturer in law at the University of Arkansas from 1936 until 1939. He was appointed president of the school in 1939, making him the youngest university president in the country. He held this post until 1941. The School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas is named in his honor.

Fulbright's sister, Roberta, married Gilbert C. Swanson, the head of the Swanson frozen-foods conglomerate, and was the maternal grandmother of media figure Tucker Carlson.^[3]

Congressional career

Senator Fulbright and the Chicken Tax

U.S. intensive chicken farming led to the 1961-1964 Chicken War with Europe.

With imports of inexpensive chicken from the U.S., chicken prices fell quickly and sharply across Europe, radically affecting European chicken consumption.^[4] U.S. chicken overtook nearly half of the imported European chicken market.^[4] Coming on the heels of a "crisis in trade relations between the U.S. and the Common Market,"^[4] Europe moved ahead with tariffs. ^[5]

Senator Fulbright, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic Senator from Arkansas — a chief poultry-producing state — interrupted a NATO debate on nuclear armament to protest trade sanctions on U.S. chicken,^[6] going so far as to threaten cutting US troops in NATO.

The U.S. subsequently enacted a 25% tariff on imported light trucks, known as the Chicken tax — that remains in effect as of 2009.

House of Representatives

Fulbright was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1942, where he served one term. During this period, he became a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The House adopted the Fulbright Resolution which supported international peace-keeping initiatives and encouraged the United States to participate in what became the United Nations in September 1942. This brought Fulbright to national attention. He was elected to the Senate in 1944, where he served five six-year terms.

He promoted the passage of legislation establishing the Fulbright Program in 1946, a program of educational grants (Fulbright Fellowships and Fulbright Scholarships), sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, governments in other countries, and the private sector. The program was established to increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. It is considered one of the most prestigious award programs and it operates in 144 countries.

Senate

Fulbright became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1949, and served as chairman from 1959 to 1974 – he was the longest-serving chair in that committee's history.

He was the only senator to vote against an appropriation for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1954, which was chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy^{[citation needed]}. McCarthy in turn, repeatedly called him "Senator Halfbright."^{[citation needed]}

Fulbright signed The Southern Manifesto opposing the Supreme Court's historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He subsequently joined with the Dixiecrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as voting against the 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, during the Nixon administration Fulbright voted for a civil rights bill and led the charge against confirming Nixon's conservative Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell [1].

Fulbright raised serious objections to President John F. Kennedy about the impending Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961, and also to President Lyndon B. Johnson on the 1965 Dominican Civil War in Santo Domingo[7]. On 30 July 1961, two weeks before the erection of the Berlin Wall, Fulbright said in a television interview, "I don't understand why the East Germans don't just close their border, because I think they have the right to close it."  [2]. It has been suggested that President Kennedy asked Fulbright to make this statement as a way of signaling to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the building of a wall would be viewed by the United States as an acceptable way of defusing the Berlin Crisis.^{[citation needed]}

Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1963, Fulbright claimed five million tax-deductible dollars from philanthropic Americans was sent to Israel and then recycled back to the U.S. for distribution to organizations seeking to influence public opinion in favor of Israel.^{[citation needed]} This statement led to friction with organized pro-Israeli groups in the U.S.

Perhaps his most notable case of dissent was his public condemnation of foreign and domestic policies, in particular, his concern that right-wing radicalism, as espoused by the John Birch Society and wealthy oil-man H.L. Hunt, had infected the United States military.^{[citation needed]} He was, in turn, denounced by conservative Senators J. Strom Thurmond and Barry M. Goldwater.^{[citation needed]} Goldwater and Texas Senator John Tower announced that they were going to Arkansas to campaign against Fulbright,^[8] but Arkansas voters reelected him.

Despite serving in the Senate for 30 years, Fulbright remained Arkansas' junior senator throughout his tenure, serving alongside senior senator John L. McClellan. He is the longest-serving senator in history to never become his state's senior senator.

Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy

On August 7, 1964, a unanimous House of Representatives and all but two members of the Senate voted to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which led to a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War. Fulbright, who not only voted for, but sponsored, the resolution, would later write:

Many Senators who accepted the Gulf of Tonkin resolution without question might well not have done so had they foreseen that it would subsequently be interpreted as a sweeping Congressional endorsement for the conduct of a large-scale war in Asia.

U.S. Congressional opposition to U.S. involvement in wars and interventions

1812 North America

House Federalists’ Address

1847 Mexican–American War

Spot Resolutions

1917 World War I

Filibuster of the Armed Ship Bill

1935–1939

Neutrality Acts

1935–1940

Ludlow Amendment

1970 Vietnam

McGovern-Hatfield Amendment

1970 Southeast Asia

Cooper-Church Amendment

1971 Vietnam

Repeal of Tonkin Gulf Resolution

1973 Southeast Asia

Case-Church Amendment

1973

War Powers Resolution

1974

Hughes-Ryan Amendment

1976 Angola

Clark Amendment

1982 Nicaragua

Boland Amendment

2007 Iraq

House Concurrent Resolution 63

v • d • e

As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright held several series of hearings on the Vietnam War. Many of the earlier hearings, in 1966, were televised to the nation in their entirety (a rarity in the pre-C-Span era); the 1971 hearings included the notable testimony of Vietnam veteran and future Senator and Senate Foreign Relations Chair John Kerry.

In 1966, Fulbright published The Arrogance of Power, in which he attacked the justification of the Vietnam War, Congress's failure to set limits on it, and the impulses which gave rise to it. Fulbright's scathing critique undermined the elite consensus that U.S. military intervention in Indochina was necessitated by Cold War geopolitics. Some^[who?] critics of U.S. foreign policy argue that U.S. policy has changed little since Fulbright wrote his book, and find his words apply today.

In his book, Fulbright offered an analysis of American foreign policy:

Throughout our history two strands have coexisted uneasily; a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant Puritanism. There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable. But... when some event or leader of opinion has aroused the people to a state of high emotion, our puritan spirit has tended to break through, leading us to look at the world through the distorting prism of a harsh and angry moralism.

Fulbright also related his opposition to any American tendencies to intervene in the affairs of other nations:

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations – to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work.

He was also a strong believer in international law:

Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations. As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations. Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.

Final election and legacy

Fulbright Statue at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Fulbright retired from the Senate in 1974, after being defeated in the Democratic primary by then-Governor Dale Bumpers. As the sections above have documented, his early condemnation of the Vietnamese war, and his anti-isolationist programs, had long made him a target of his party's far right wing.

At the time that he left the Senate, Fulbright had spent his entire 30 years in the Senate as the Junior senator from Arkansas, behind John Little McClellan who entered the Senate two years before him. After his retirement, Fulbright practiced law in the Washington, DC office of Hogan & Hartson.

On May 5, 1993, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President William Clinton.

Fulbright died of a stroke in 1995 at the age of 89 in Washington, D.C. A year later, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary dinner of the Fulbright Program held June 5, 1996 at the White House, President Bill Clinton said, "Hillary and I have looked forward for sometime to celebrating this 50th anniversary of the Fulbright Program, to honor the dream and legacy of a great American, a citizen of the world, a native of my home state and my mentor and friend, Senator Fulbright." [3]

Fulbright's ashes were interred at the Fulbright Family plot in Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In 1996, George Washington University renamed a residence hall in his honor. The J. William Fulbright Hall resides at the corner of 23rd and H Streets, NW.

On October 21, 2002, in a speech at the dedication of the Fulbright Sculpture at the University of Arkansas, Bill Clinton said,

"I admired him. I liked him. On the occasions when we disagreed, I loved arguing with him. I never loved getting in an argument with anybody as much in my entire life as I loved fighting with Bill Fulbright".^{[citation needed]}

Fulbright Program

The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by then Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State.

Approximately 279,500 "Fulbrighters," 105,400 from the United States and 174,100 from other countries, have participated in the Program since its inception over sixty years ago. The Fulbright Program awards approximately 6,000 new grants annually.

Currently, the Fulbright Program operates in over 150 countries worldwide.

Sources

• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

References

1. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE7DB1E30F933A25751C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
2. ^ http://www.hogwired.com//pdf4/133090.pdf?SPSID=30726&SPID=2419&DB_OEM_ID=6100
3. ^ David Harris, "Swanson Saga: End of a Dream", The New York Times, 9 September 1979
4. ^ ^{a b c} "Western Europe: Nobody But Their Chickens". Time Magazine, Nov. 30, 1962. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829587-1,00.html. 
5. ^ "Common Market: Ruffled Feathers". Time Magazine, Aug. 16, 1962. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894606,00.html. 
6. ^ "Common Market: The Chicken War". Time Magazine, June 14 1963. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874857,00.html. 
7. ^ Verdict on Santo Domingo
8. ^ Johnson, Haynes and Gwertzmann, Bernard (1968). Fulbright: The Dissenter. Doubleday.

Further reading

• Fulbright, J. William (1966). The Arrogance of Power, New York: Random House. ISBN 0-8129-9262-8
• Fulbright, J. William (1971). The Pentagon Propaganda Machine, New York: Vintage Books
• Fulbright, J. William (1985). Advice and Dissent, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
• Clinton, Bill (2005). My Life. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.
• Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965 (Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2008).
• Johnson, Haynes and Gwertzmann, Bernard (1968). Fulbright: The Dissenter. Doubleday.
• Woods, Randall B. (1995) "Fulbright: A Biography," Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48262-3

External links

• US Department of State biography
• The Two Americas (Conclusion in "The Arrogance of Power")

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by Clyde T. Ellis	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas's 3rd congressional district 1943–1945	Succeeded by James William Trimble
United States Senate
Preceded by Hattie Caraway	United States Senator (Class 3) from Arkansas 1945–1974 Served alongside: John Little McClellan	Succeeded by Dale Bumpers
Political offices
Preceded by Theodore F. Green	Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 1959 – 1974	Succeeded by John Sparkman

v • d • e United States Senators from Arkansas Class 2 Fulton • Ashley • Sebastian • McDonald • Clayton • Garland • Berry • Davis • Heiskell • Kavanaugh • Robinson • Miller • Spencer • McClellan • Hodges • D. Pryor • Hutchinson • M. Pryor Class 3 Sevier • Borland • Johnson • Mitchel • Rice • Dorsey • Walker • Jones • Clarke • Kirby • T. Caraway • H. Caraway • Fulbright • Bumpers • Lincoln

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