J. William Fulbright
James William Fulbright was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974., Fulbright is the longest-serving chairman in the history of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best known for his strong multilateralist positions on international issues, opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the creation of the international fellowship program bearing his name, the Fulbright Program.
Fulbright was an admirer of Woodrow Wilson and an avowed anglophile. He was an early advocate for American entry into World War II and aid to Great Britain, first as a college professor and then as an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he authored the Fulbright Resolution expressing support for international peacekeeping initiatives and American entry into the United Nations.
After joining the Senate, Fulbright expressed support for Europeanism and the formation of a federal European union. He envisioned the Cold War as a struggle between nations – the United States and imperialist Russia – rather than ideologies. He therefore dismissed Asia as a peripheral theater of the conflict, focusing on containment of Soviet expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. He also stressed the possibility of nuclear annihilation, preferring political solutions over military solutions to Soviet aggression. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, his position moderated further to one of détente.
His political stances and powerful position as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made him one of the most visible critics of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Although he was persuaded by President Lyndon Johnson to sponsor the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, his relationship with the President soured after the 1965 U.S. bombing of Pleiku and Fulbright's opposition to the war in Vietnam took root. Beginning in 1966, he chaired high-profile hearings investigating the conduct and progress of the war, which may have influenced the eventual American withdrawal.
On domestic issues, Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and signatory to the Southern Manifesto. Fulbright also opposed the anti-Communist crusades of Joseph McCarthy and the similar investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Early life, family and education
Fulbright was born on April 9, 1905, in Sumner, Missouri, the son of Jay and Roberta Fulbright. In 1906, the Fulbright family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. His mother was a businesswoman, who consolidated her husband's business enterprises and became an influential newspaper publisher, editor, and journalist.Fulbright's parents enrolled him in the University of Arkansas's College of Education's experimental grammar and secondary school.
University of Arkansas
Fulbright earned a history degree from the University of Arkansas in 1925, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He was elected president of the student body, was a member of the debate team, and was a star four-year player for the Arkansas Razorbacks football team from 1921 to 1924.Oxford University
Fulbright later studied at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College and graduated in 1928. Fulbright's time at Oxford made him into a lifelong Anglophile, and he always had warm memories of Oxford.At Oxford, he played on the rugby and lacrosse teams, and every summer, Fulbright decamped for France ostensibly to improve his French but really just to enjoy life in France.
Fulbright credited his time at Oxford with broadening his horizons. In particular, he credited his professor and friend R. B. McCallum's "one world" philosophy of the world as an interlinked entity, where developments in one part would always have an impact on the other parts. McCallum was a great admirer of Woodrow Wilson, a supporter of the League of Nations, and a believer that multinational organizations were the best way to ensure global peace. Fulbright remained close to McCallum for the rest of his life and regularly exchanged letters with his mentor until McCallum's death in 1973.
In 1930, Fulbright met his first wife, Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Kremer Williams, at a dinner party during a business trip to Washington, D.C. He moved to Washington shortly thereafter to remain close to her. The couple married on June 15, 1932, and went on to have two daughters.
Fulbright received his law degree from The George Washington University Law School in 1934, was admitted to the bar in the District of Columbia, and became an attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Legal and academic career
Fulbright was a lecturer in law at the University of Arkansas from 1936 to 1939. He was appointed president of the school in 1939, making him the youngest university president in the country. He held that post until 1941. The School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas is named in his honor, and he was elected there into Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. In September 1939, Fulbright, as president of the University of Arkansas, issued a public declaration declaring his sympathy with the Allied cause and urged the United States to maintain a pro-Allied neutrality. In the summer of 1940, Fulbright went a step further and declared it was in America's "vital interest" to enter the war on the Allied side and warned that a victory by Nazi Germany would make the world a much darker place. The same year, Fulbright joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.In June 1941, Fulbright was suddenly fired from the University of Arkansas by the Governor, Homer Martin Adkins. He learned that the reason for his sacking was that Adkins had been offended that a Northwest Arkansas newspaper owned by his mother Roberta Fulbright had supported the governor's opponent in the 1940 Democratic primary, and that was the governor's revenge. Upset at the way that the governor's caprice had ended his academic career, Fulbright became interested in politics.
U.S. House of Representatives
Fulbright was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1942, where he served one term. During this period, he became a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. During World War II, there was much debate about the best way to win the peace after the Allies presumably won the war, with many urging the United States to reject isolationism. In September 1943 the House adopted the Fulbright Resolution, which supported international peacekeeping initiatives and encouraged the United States to participate in what became the United Nations in 1945. That brought Fulbright to national attention.In 1943, a confidential analysis by Isaiah Berlin of the House and Senate foreign relations committees for the British Foreign Office identified Fulbright as "a distinguished new-comer to the House." It continued:
U.S. Senator (1945–1974)
Fulbright's career in the Senate was somewhat stunted, his tangible influence never matching his public luminescence. For all his seniority and powerful committee posts, he was not considered part of the Senate's inner circle of friends and power brokers. He seemed to prefer it that way: the man who Harry S. Truman had called an "overeducated SOB" was, in the words of Clayton Fritchey, "an individualist and a thinker," whose "intellectualism alone alienates him from the Club" of the Senate.1944 election
In his first bid for the Senate, he won the 1944 Democratic primary by besting both incumbent Hattie Carraway, the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, and Homer Adkins, the sitting governor who had fired him from the University of Arkansas. He easily won the general election against the Republican Victor Wade, a common result in the heavily Democratic South of the era. He went on to serve five six-year terms.Establishment of Fulbright program
He promoted the passage of legislation in 1946 establishing the Fulbright Program of educational grants, 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 operates in 155 countries.Truman administration and Korean War
In November 1946, immediately following the midterm elections in which Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress amidst President Harry S. Truman's plummeting popularity in the polls, Fulbright suggested the President appoint Senator Arthur Vandenberg as his Secretary of State and resign, making Vandenberg president. Truman responded by saying he did not care what Senator "Halfbright" said.In 1947, Fulbright supported the Truman Doctrine and voted for American aid to Greece. Subsequently, he voted for the Marshall Plan and to join NATO. Fulbright was very supportive of the plans for a federation in Western Europe. Fulbright supported the 1950 plan written by Jean Monnet and presented by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman for a European Coal and Steel Community, the earliest predecessor to the European Union.
In 1949, Fulbright became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
After China's entry into the Korean War in October 1950, Fulbright warned against American escalation. On January 18, 1951, he dismissed Korea as a peripheral interest not worth the risk of World War III and condemned plans to attack China as reckless and dangerous. In the same speech, he argued that the Soviet Union, not China, was the real enemy and that Korea was a distraction from Europe, which he considered to be far more important.
When President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination in April 1951, Fulbright came to Truman's defense. When MacArthur appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the invitation of Republican senators, Fulbright embraced his role of Truman's defender. When MacArthur argued communism was an inherent mortal danger to the United States, Fulbright countered, "I had not myself thought of our enemy as being Communism; I thought of it as primarily being imperialist Russia."