J. William Fulbright


James William Fulbright was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from January 1945 until his resignation in December 1974. Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist, he supported the creation of the United Nations. Fulbright opposed McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee and later became known for his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. His efforts to establish an international exchange program eventually resulted in the creation of a fellowship program which bears his name, the Fulbright Program.

Early years

Fulbright was born in Sumner, Missouri, the son of Roberta Fulbright and Jay 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.
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 and a star four-year player for the Razorback football team from 1921 to 1924.
Fulbright later studied at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College, graduating in 1928. Fulbright's time at Oxford made him into a lifelong Anglophile and he always had warm memories of Oxford. Fulbright credited his time at Oxford with broadening his horizons as he learned much about the world beyond America, and in particular credited one of his professors and friends, R. B. McCallum with encouraging him to think about the world as an interlinked entity, where developments in one part of the world would always impact on the other parts. McCallum was a great admirer of Woodrow Wilson, a supporter of the League of Nations, and a man who believed that multinational organizations were the best way to keep the peace. Fulbright remained close to McCallum for the rest of his life, regularly exchanging letters with his mentor until his death in 1973. At Oxford, he played on the rugby and lacrosse teams, and every summer, Fulbright decamped for France, ostensibly to improve his French, but in reality just to enjoy life in France. Fulbright's "one world" philosophy encouraged by McCallum made him skeptical of isolationism. He received his law degree from The George Washington University Law School in 1934, 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, 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, the Anglophile Fulbright went a step further and declared it was in America's "vital interest" to enter the war on the Allied side, warning that a victory by Nazi Germany would take the world in a much darker direction. The same year, Fulbright joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
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. 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 because Adkins was offended that a newspaper owned by Fulbright's mother had supported the governor's opponent in the 1940 Democratic primary, and this was the governor's revenge. Upset at the way in which the governor's caprice had ended his academic career, Fulbright became interested in politics.

Congressional career

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. 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 1943. This 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. Senate

He was elected to the Senate in 1944, unseating incumbent Hattie Carraway, the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. He served five six-year terms. In his first general election to the Senate, Fulbright defeated the Republican Victor Wade of Batesville, 85.1 to 14.9 percent.
He promoted the passage of legislation establishing the Fulbright Program in 1946, a 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 it operates in 155 countries. In 1947, he 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 of the Western European states. Fulbright supported the 1950 plan written by Jean Monnet and presented by the French foreign minister Robert Schuman for a European Coal and Steel Community, which came into existence in 1951, that became the European Economic Community in 1957 and was renamed the European Union in 1993.
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. In his speeches, Fulbright showed himself to be a Europeanist who was committed to resisting Soviet expansionism in Europe while being hostile to American commitments in Asia. Despite his reputation as one of the Senate's leading foreign policy experts, he said almost nothing about the Korean War until China entered the war in October 1950. He then warned against escalating the war by attacking China as many both outside and inside the government, most notably General Douglas MacArthur, were advocating. In a speech on 18 January 1951, he dismissed Korea as a matter of peripheral interest that was not worth fighting World War Three over, and condemned the plans for attacking China as reckless and dangerous. In the same speech, he argued that the Soviet Union, not China, was the real enemy and Korea was a distraction from Europe, which he considered to be far more important.
When President Harry S. Truman sacked General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination in April 1951 after MacArthur publicly criticized Truman for deciding to not widen the war when he stated that the United States would not directly attack China, Fulbright came to Truman's defense. Against MacArthur's argument that there was "no substitute for victory" and the Korean War could only be won by expanding it by attacking China, Fulbright stated that the U.S. constitution stated quite explicitly the president was the supreme commander-in-chief and it was the duty of generals to obey the president, not vice-versa. When MacArthur appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, having been invited by Republican senators looking for a chance to embarrass Truman, Fulbright embraced the role of Truman's defender. During his acrimonious exchanges with MacArthur, a basic difference emerged in their philosophies. MacArthur took a fanatically anti-communist position, arguing that Communism by its very existence was a mortal danger to the United States, which required a policy of seeking to eradicate Communism whatever it existed in the world; from this viewpoint, MacArthur argued that Truman's policy of fighting a "limited war" in Korea was dangerous, and the correct policy to follow was to invade China with the aim of overthrowing Mao Zedong and restoring Chiang Kai-shek. In response, Fulbright stated: "I had not myself thought of our enemy as being Communism, I thought of it as primarily being imperialist Russia".
Fulbright believed that the antagonist was the Soviet Union or "Russia" as he preferred to call it, which just happened to be a Communist state, and as such the foreign policy he advocated was anti-Soviet rather than anti-communist. At the same time, Fulbright believed that a Third World War would be almost certainly be a nuclear war that might very well spell the end of humanity, and as such he favored the policy of "containment" of the Soviet Union instead of the policy of "rollback" advocated by MacArthur and many right-wing American politicians including Senator Joseph McCarthy. Furthermore, Fulbright saw the Cold War more as a political struggle rather than a military struggle, and in a 1952 speech criticized Truman for excessively high levels of military spending. Fulbright argued that the evidence that the Soviet Union was about to attack the United States was weak, and if a war with the Soviets was extremely unlikely to occur, asked if it was really necessary to devote such a high percentage of the budget to the military.
The intellectual Fulbright had a strong personal dislike of the anti-intellectual Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose demagogy he viewed as a major threat to American democracy while his promotion of the concept of "rollback" he thought likely to cause World War Three. In a speech, he called McCarthy an incredibly vulgar and crude man who if unchecked would cause America's institutions to fall victim to "swinish blight of anti-intellectualism". He was the only senator to vote against an appropriation for the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1954, which was chaired by Senator McCarthy. Like his friend, Adlai Stevenson, Fulbright was regarded as a "Cold War liberal". During the Eisenhower administration, Fulbright tended to support the substance of its policies while criticizing its style.
In 1956, Fulbright campaigned across the country for the unsuccessful Stevenson-Kefauver ticket. He swamped his Republican challenger that year, Ben C. Henley, the state party chairman and a brother of U.S. District Judge Jesse Smith Henley of Harrison. In his re-election bid in 1956, Fulbright emphasized his opposition to civil rights for Afro-Americans and support for segregation while noting that he also his support for oil companies and that he consistently voted for more farm aid to poultry farmers.
Fulbright signed the Southern Manifesto in opposition of the Supreme Court's historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, which the Manifesto deemed "a clear abuse of judicial power." With other southern Democrats, Fulbright filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as voting against the 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, in 1970, during the Nixon administration, Fulbright voted for a five-year extension of the Voting Rights Act. He also led the charge against confirming Nixon's conservative Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell.
According to historian and former Special Assistant to President Kennedy Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Fulbright was Kennedy's first choice as Secretary of State, but it was felt he was too controversial. Rather the "lowest common denominator", Dean Rusk, was chosen.
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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. U.S. chicken overtook nearly half of the imported European chicken market. Coming on the heels of a "crisis in trade relations between the U.S. and the Common Market", Europe moved ahead with tariffs.




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, 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 2010.
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.
In May 1961, Fulbright denounced the Kennedy administration's system of having diplomats rotate from one position to another as an "idiot policy".
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". Fulbright's statement was reported as a three-column spread on the front page of the East German Communist Party newspaper Neues Deutschland. The West German reception of his statement was extremely negative. A cable from US Embassy Bonn reported that "rarely has a statement by a prominent American official aroused so much consternation, chagrin and anger." Willy Brandt's Press Secretary Egon Bahr is quoted as saying: "We privately called him Fulbricht".
McGeorge Bundy sent the press coverage of Fulbright's interview to the President with a comment about "the helpful impact of Senator Fulbright's remarks". Kennedy subsequently refused to distance himself from Fulbright's observation, which suggests that he 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.
Fulbright met with Kennedy during the latter's visit to Fort Smith, Arkansas in October 1961.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis which almost caused a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, Fulbright moved away from the "containment" policies he advocated in the 1950s. Fulbright argued that a nuclear war would be the end of humanity, and through he did not like the Soviet Union, it was far better to pursue a policy of détente and of reducing tensions rather than to fight a war that nobody would win. Fulbright was regularly involved in debates with Senator Barry Goldwater who had emerged as the leader of the more right-wing Republicans. In response to Goldwater's call for a "total victory" over Communism, Fulbright challenged him, asking if he really believed that a "total victory" was worth a nuclear war that would kill hundreds of millions of people. When Goldwater replied it was possible for the United States to win a nuclear war, Fulbright challenged him if he really wanted the United States to occupy what would be left of the Soviet Union and China after a nuclear war, a remark that Goldwater did not reply to.
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. This statement led to friction with organized pro-Israeli groups in the U.S. Frustration with the ability of the Zionist Organization of America and other Zionist lobby groups to influence Senators with their campaign contributions led Fulbright to retort on Face the Nation'' on April 15, 1973 that "Israel controls the U.S. Senate" and that "The Senate is subservient to Israel, in my opinion much too much. We should be more concerned about the United States interest rather than doing the bidding of Israel. This is a most unusual development."
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. He was, in turn, denounced by Republican Senators J. Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater. Goldwater and Texas Senator John Tower announced that they were going to Arkansas to campaign against Fulbright, but Arkansas voters reelected him.
One of Fulbright's local staffers in Arkansas was James McDougal. While working for Fulbright, McDougal met the future Arkansas governor and US President Bill Clinton and the two of them, along with their wives, began investing in various development properties, including the parcel of land along the White River in the Ozarks that would later be the subject of an independent counsel investigation during Clinton's first term in office.
Despite serving in the Senate for 30 years, Fulbright remained Arkansas' junior senator throughout his tenure, serving alongside senior Senator John L. McClellan. He along with Tom Harkin of Iowa who served alongside Chuck Grassley, are both the longest-serving senators in history to never become their state's senior senator.
In terms of legislative power too, Fulbright's career was somewhat stunted, its influence never matching its luminescence. For all his seniority and powerful committee posts, he was not considered a part of the Senate's inner circle of friends and power brokers. He seemed to prefer it this way: the man who Harry S. Truman called an "overeducated SOB" was, in the words of Clayton Fritchey, "an individualist and a thinker", a man whose "intellectualism alone alienates him from the Club" of the Senate.

McCarthy confrontation

The Republicans gained a majority in the Senate following the 1952 elections, allowing Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy to become chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. A month into McCarthy's tenure, Fulbright received a letter from former Connecticut Senator William Benton with whom he had developed a friendship during the Jessup hearings. Benton had lost his re-election bid the previous November after being targeted by anti-communist supporters of McCarthy. Benton urged Fulbright to assume a leading role in opposition to McCarthy and pledged he would receive support for doing so. Fulbright, though sympathetic toward Benton, wished to follow the guideline set by Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson who indicated his unwillingness to have Democrats become involved in condemnation of McCarthy. Fulbright was alarmed by McCarthy's attack on the Voice of America and the United States Information Agency, the latter agency at the time supervising educational exchange programs. This was followed by the summer 1953 withdrawal by the State Department of a fellowship for a male student whose wife was suspected of communist affiliation and the scheduling by the Senate Appropriations Committee of a hearing on the annual appropriations of the USIA, the inquiry appearing to put the Fulbright Program at stake.
The confrontation between Fulbright and McCarthy took place in the Supreme Court Chamber of Capitol Hill. McCarthy questioned Fulbright over his knowledge of whether the board clearing students for funding from the USIA received a security check, and on a policy that bars communists and communist sympathizers from receiving appointments as lecturers and professors. McCarthy pressed Fulbright to answer the second question while Fulbright recounted members of the board. McCarthy explained that he believed Fulbright had some level of influence on the Fulbright Program since it bore his name, but Fulbright disagreed, stating that his exerting such influence would destroy the board. After McCarthy insisted that he be authorized to release statements of some Fulbright Program students both praising the communist form of government and condemning American values, Fulbright countered that he was willing to submit thousands of names of students who had praised the US and its way of government in their statements. The encounter was the last time McCarthy made a public assault on the program; leading historian and original Fulbright Program board member Walter Johnson credited Fulbright with preventing the program from being ended by McCarthyism.

Early segregation activities

In 1950, Fulbright co-sponsored an amendment, which, if enacted, would allow soldiers to choose whether or not to serve in a racially integrated unit. Two years later, Fulbright assisted with blocking an Alaska statehood bill entirely due to his view that legislators from the state would be in favor of civil rights bills.
To express southern disagreement with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that public school segregation was unconstitutional, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond wrote the initial draft of the Southern Manifesto. Fulbright signed a later version of the document along with eighteen other senators. In a letter to a constituent in Little Rock, Fulbright stated that the South had no way of expressing how wrong its representatives believed the Supreme Court was except to attempt to replicate the secession of the South from the Union prior to the beginning of the Civil War. Fulbright telephoned Alabama Senators John Sparkman and Lister Hill as well as Price Daniel, all of whom agreed to support a moderate version of the Southern Manifesto. Fulbright told his despondent aides that the new version would be the only way Hill and himself would retain influence within the Dixie delegation. The draft put forth by the four senators took a moderate approach to the Supreme Court decision, pledging the southern senators would reverse the ruling through legal moves and recognizing themselves as the minority in the Senate. Hardliners against civil rights were dismayed by the modifications to the document made by Fulbright because they viewed it as casting them as supplicants rather than victims. According to biographer Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright believed that the South was not yet ready for integration but that education would eventually eradicate prejudice, allowing blacks to "take their rightful place in American society." Fulbright's signing of the Southern Manifesto did not prevent him from being able to survive politically amid growing numbers of black voters in Arkansas. He delivered an address to the Arkansas Democratic Voters' Association where he insisted his intervention had led to the moderate version of the Southern Manifesto and his claims were generally accepted by Arkansan black leadership.

Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy

In August 1961, as the Kennedy administration held firm in its commitment to a five-year foreign aid program, Fulbright and Pennsylvania representative Thomas E. Morgan accompanied Democratic congressional leadership to their weekly White House breakfast session with Kennedy. In delivering opening statements on August 4, Fulbright spoke of the program introducing a new concept of foreign aid in the event of its passage.
On March 25, 1964, Fulbright delivered an address calling on the US to adapt itself to a world that was both changing and complex, the address being said by Fulbright to have been meant to explore self-evident truths in the national vocabulary of the US regarding the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Panama, and Latin America.
In May 1964, Fulbright predicated that time would see a cessation in the misunderstanding within the relationship between France and the United States and that President of France Charles de Gaulle was deeply admired for his achievements in spite of confusion that might arise in others from his rhetoric.
On 4 August 1964, the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara accused North Vietnam of attacking an American destroyer, the USS Maddox, in international waters in what came to be known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The same day, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on national television to denounce North Vietnam for "aggression" and to announce that he ordered retaliatory air raids on North Vietnam. In the same speech, Johnson asked Congress to a resolution to prove to North Vietnam and its ally China that United States was united "in support of freedom and in defense of peace in southeast Asia". On 5 August 1964, Fulbright arrived at the White House to meet Johnson, where the president asked his old friend to use all his influence to get the resolution passed by the widest possible margin. Fulbright was one of the Senators Johnson was most anxious and keen to have support the resolution. Through Fulbright was too much an individualist and intellectual to belong to the "Club" of the Senate, he was widely respected as a thinker on foreign policy and was known to be a defender of Congress's prerogatives. From Johnson's viewpoint having him support the resolution would bring many of the waverers around to voting for the resolution, as indeed proved to be the case.
Johnson insisted quite vehemently to Fulbright that the alleged attack on the Maddox had taken place and it was only later that Fulbright became skeptical about whatever the alleged attack had really taken place. Furthermore, Johnson insisted the resolution, which was a "functional equivalent to a declaration of war" was not intended to be used for going to war in Vietnam. In the 1964 presidential election, the Republicans had nominated Goldwater as their candidate, who ran on a platform accusing Johnson of being "soft on Communism" and by contrast promised a "total victory" over Communism. Johnson argued to Fulbright that the resolution was an election year stunt that would prove to the voters that he was really "tough on Communism" and thus dent the appeal of Goldwater by denying him of his main avenue of attack. Besides for the primat der innenpolitik reason Johnson gave for the resolution, he also gave a primat der aussenpolitik reason, arguing that such a resolution would intimidate North Vietnam into ceasing to try to overthrow the government of South Vietnam, and as such Congress passing a resolution would make American involvement in Vietnam less likely rather than more likely. Fulbright's longstanding friendship with Johnson made it difficult for him to go against the president, who cunningly exploited Fulbright's vulnerability, namely his desire to have greater influence over foreign policy. Johnson gave Fulbright the impression that he would be one of his unofficial advisers on foreign policy and that he was very interested in turning his ideas into policies, provided that he voted for the resolution, which was a test of their friendship. Johnson also hinted that he was thinking about sacking Rusk if he won the 1964 election and would consider nominating Fulbright to be the next Secretary of State. Finally, for Fulbright in 1964 it was inconceivable that Johnson would lie to him and he believed the resolution "was not going to be used for anything other than the Tonkin Gulf incident itself" as Johnson had told him.
On 6 August 1964, Fulbright gave a speech on the Senate floor calling for the resolution to be passed as he accused North Vietnam of "aggression" and praised Johnson for his "great restraint...in response to the provocation of a small power". He also declared his support for the Johnson administration's "noble" Vietnam policy, which he called a policy of seeking "...to establish viable, independent states in Indochina and elsewhere which will be free and secure from the combination of Communist China and Communist North Vietnam". Fulbright concluded that this policy could be accomplished via diplomatic means and echoing Johnson's argument, argued that it was necessary to pass the resolution as a way to intimidate North Vietnam who would presumably change their policies towards South Vietnam once Congress passed the resolution. Several Senators such as Allen Elleder, Jacob Javits, John Sherman Cooper, Daniel Brewster, George McGovern and Gaylord Nelson were very reluctant to vote for a resolution that would be a "blank cheque" for a war in southeast Asia, and a meeting Fulbright sought to assure them, saying that passing such a resolution would make fighting a war less likely, claiming the whole purpose of the resolution was only intimidation. Nelson wanted to insert an amendment which would bar the president from sending troops to fight in Vietnam unless he obtained the permission of Congress first, saying he did not like the open-ended nature of this resolution. Fulbright persuaded him not to, arguing the resolution was "harmless" while saying that the real purpose of the resolution was "to pull the rug out from under Goldwater", going on to ask Nelson who did he prefer to win the election, Johnson or Goldwater?. Fulbright dismissed Nelson's fears of giving Johnson a "blank cheque", saying he had the president's word that "the last thing we want to do is become involved in a land war in Asia".
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 also 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.

during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Vietnam War in 1966|left
By his own admission, Fulbright knew almost nothing about Vietnam until he met in 1965 Bernard B. Fall a French journalist who often wrote about Vietnam. Speaking to Fall radically changed Fulbright's thinking about Vietnam as the former asserted that it simply not true that Ho Chi Minh was a Sino-Soviet "puppet" who was only throwing to overthrow the government of South Vietnam because his masters in Moscow and Beijing had presumably told him to do so. Fall's influence served as the catalyst for the change in Fulbright's thinking as Fall introduced to the writings of Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture. Fulbright made it his mission to learn as possible about Vietnam, and indeed he had learned so much at a meeting with the Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Fulbright was able to correct several mistakes made by the former about Vietnamese history, much to Rusk's discomfort.
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. In February 1966, Fulbright held the first hearings about the Vietnam war, where George F. Kennan and General James M. Gavin appeared as expert witnesses. Kennan testified that the Vietnam War was a grotesque distortion of the "containment" policy he outlined in 1946-47 while the World War II hero Gavin testified that it was his opinion as a soldier that the war could not be won. On 4 February 1966, in an attempt to upstage the hearings Fulbright was holding in Washington, Johnson called an impromptu summit in Honolulu, hoping that the media would play more attention to the summit he had called than to hearings Fulbright was holding. As Fulbright had once been Johnson's friend, his criticism of the war was seen by the president as a personal betrayal, leading Johnson to lash out in especially vitriolic terms against him. Johnson took the view that at least Senator Wayne Morse had always been opposed to the Vietnam War whereas Fulbright had promised him to support his Vietnam policy in 1964, causing him to see the latter as a "Judas" figure. Johnson liked to mock Fulbright as "Senator Halfbright", sneering it was astonishing that someone as "stupid" as Fulbright had been awarded a degree at Oxford.
In April 1966, Fulbright delivered a speech at Johns Hopkins University where President Johnson had delivered a forthright defense of the war just a year before, that were sharply critical of the war. In his speech delivered in his usual folksy Southern drawl Fulbright stated that the United States was "in danger of losing its perspective on what exactly is within the realm of its power and what is beyond it". Warning of what he called "the arrogance of power", Fulbright declared "we are not living up to our capacity and promise as a civilized power for the world", calling the Vietnam war a betrayal of American values. Johnson was furious with the speech, which he saw a personal attack from a man who had once been his friend, believing the remark about the "arrogance of power" was about him. Johnson lashed out in a speech where he called Fulbright and other critics of the war "nervous Nellies" who knew the war in Vietnam could and would be won and were just too cowardly to fight on to the final victory.
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.
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.

By 1967, the Senate was divided into three blocs. There was an anti-war "dove" bloc led by Fulbright; a pro-war "hawk" bloc led by the conservative Southern Democrat Senator John C. Stennis and a third bloc consisting of waverers who tended to shift their positions about war in tune with public opinion, moving variously closer to doves and hawks as they followed the public opinion polls. In contrast to his hostile attitudes towards Fulbright, Johnson was afraid of being labelled "soft on Communism" and he tended to try to appease Stennis and the hawks, who kept pressuring for more and more aggressive measures in Vietnam. In early 1968, Fulbright was deeply depressed as he stated: "The President, unfortunately, seems to have closed his mind to the consideration of any alternative, and his Rasputin-W.W. Rostow-seems able to isolate him from other views, and the Secretary happens to agree. I regret that I am unable to break this crust of immunity". However, after Robert McNamara was fired as Defense Secretary, Fulbright saw a "ray of light" as the man who replaced McNamara, Clark Clifford, was a long-standing "close personal friend". Through Johnson had appointed Clifford Defense Secretary because he was a hawk, Fulbright sought to change his mind about Vietnam. Fulbright invited Clifford to a secret meeting where he introduced the newly appointed Defense Secretary to two World War Two heroes, General James M. Gavin and General Matthew Ridgway. Both Gavin and Ridgway were emphatic that the United States could not win the war in Vietnam and their opposition to the war helped to change Clifford's mind. Despite his success with Clifford, Fulbright was close to despair as he wrote in a letter to Erich Frommn that this "literally a miasma of madness in the city, enveloping everyone in the administration and most of those in Congress. I am at a loss of words to describe the idiocy of what we are doing".
Seeing that the Johnson administration was reeling in the wake of the Tet Offensive, Fulbright in February 1968 called for hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into the Gulf of Tonkin incident as Fulbright noted there were several aspects of the claim that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked American destroyers in international waters that seemed dubious and questionable. McNamara was subpoenaed, and the televised hearings led to "fireworks" as Fulbright repeatedly asked difficult answers about De Soto raids on North Vietnam together with Operation 34A. On 11 March 1968, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Through Rusk was scheduled to testify about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the previous day in The New York Times there appeared a leaked story that General William Westmoreland had requested that Johnson sent 206,000 more troops to Vietnam. During Rusk's two days of testimony, the main issue turned out to be the troop request with Fulbright insisting that president seek congressional approval first. Most notably, several senators who previously voted with Stennis and the hawks now aligned themselves with Fulbright, indicating that Congress was turning against the war.
At the end of October 1968, after President Johnson announced a halt in bombing in North Vietnam in accordance with peace talks, Fulbright stated his hopefulness that the announcement would lead to a general ceasefire.
In March 1969, Secretary of State William P. Rogers testified at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing regarding the Nixon administration's foreign policy, Fulbright telling Rogers that the appearance was both useful and promising. In May 1969, Fulbright delivered a speech at National War College, advocating for the United States to withdraw from Vietnam in spite of possibly having to settle for something lower than a standoff against the Communists and spoke in favor of overhauling foreign policy that concentrates less on the power of the executive branch. On 15 October 1969, Fulbright spoke at one of the rallies held by the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. As all of the rallies held on 15 October were peaceful, Fulbright taunted a reporter who was hoping there would be violence, saying: "I am sorry that you thought the demonstrations of 15 October were 'subversive and hysterical'. They seemed to me to be extremely well-behaved and a very serious demonstration of disapproval of the tragic mistake...in Vietnam". In response to the Moratorium protests, President Richard Nixon went on national television on 3 November 1969 to give his "silent majority speech" asking for the support of the "silent majority" for his Vietnam policy. On 4 November, Fulbright told a journalist that Nixon had "fully and truthfully taken upon himself Johnson's war". Fulbright called for the second round of the Moratorium protests scheduled for 15 November to be cancelled, fearing that Nixon was planning to start a riot to discredit the anti-war movement. Through the protests of 15 were peaceful, the success of Nixon's "silent majority speech" left Fulbright depressed as he wrote at the time: "it is very distressing, indeed, to think that we eliminated LBJ only to end up with this, which is almost more than the human spirit can endure". However, on 12 November 1969, there appeared in The New York Times an article by Seymour Hersh revealing the My Lai Massacre, which occurred on 16 March 1968.. Fulbright was deeply shocked when he learned about what happened at May Lai, saying "it is a matter of the greatest importance and emphasizes in the most dramatic manner the brutalization of our society"..
In 1971, Fulbright held another set of hearing about the Vietnam. The 1971 hearings included the notable testimony of Vietnam veteran and future Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.

1970s

In February 1970, South Dakota Senator George McGovern accused former Vietcong detainee James N. Rowe of being dispatched by the Pentagon to criticize him, Senator Fulbright, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who had indicated their opposition to continued American involvement in Vietnam. On March 11, Fulbright introduced a resolution regarding the commitment of American troops or air forces for combat in Laos by President Nixon, who under the guidelines of the resolution would not be able to combat forces in or over Laos without congressional affirmative action. In his address introducing the resolution, Fulbright said in part, "The Senate must not remain silent now while the President uses the armed forces of the United States to, fight an undeclared and undisclosed war in Laos." The following month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to repeal the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Fulbright admitted the repeal by that point would have little to no legal impact and described the action as one intended to be part of an ongoing process of clearing out legislation now out of date. On August 22, Fulbright stated his support for a bilateral treaty which would grant the United States authority to use military force for the purpose of guaranteeing both "territory and independence of Israel within the borders of 1967" and that the proposed measure would obligate Israel not to violate these frontiers, which were created prior to the Six-Day War. In October, Defense Department officials disclosed publication of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee showing the United States entered into a 1960 agreement supporting a 40,000‐man Ethiopian army in addition to beginning the country's opposition to threats against the territorial integrity of Ethiopia. Fulbright responded to the disclosure by saying the wording seemed to go "much further than saying a good word in the United Nations" and suggested the US had agreed to aid the Ethiopian Emperor if the possibility of facing an internal insurrection arose.
On February 28, 1971, Fulbright announced his intent to submit a bill compelling the Secretary of State and other Nixon administration officials to appear before Congress to explain the administration's position on Vietnam, Fulbright saying the measure would be warrant due to the refusal of both William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger as well as other officials to appear before Congress, reasoning that they would not appear because "they know there are a number of people who don't agree with them, and it makes it embarrassing and they don't like it; they especially don't like to have it in front of television." On October 31, Fulbright pledged his support to less controversial aspects of foreign aid such as refugee relief and military aid to Israel while predicting the Nixon administration would be met with defeat or contention in the event of proposed aid for Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Greece. Fulbright said a meeting between the Foreign Relations Committee the following day would see "that some kind of interim program will probably be devised" and concurrently expressing his disdain for "the continuing resolution approach".
In March 1972, Fulbright sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst requesting the Justice Department not use the U.S.I.A. documentary Czechoslovakia 1968 for use in New York, stating that it appeared to violate the 1948 law that created the agency which he stated "was created for the purpose of the dissemination abroad of information about the United States, its people, and policies." In April, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced the end of an inquiry into a drinking incident involving United States Ambassador to France Arthur K. Watson, Fulbright saying that he did not expect the committee to pursue the matter and publicizing a letter on the subject from Secretary of State Rogers. On August 3, the Senate approved the treaty limiting defense missiles for the US and Soviet Union. The following day, Fulbright held a closed meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in order to form a counter-strategy against the Nixon administration's attempts to attach additional reservations to the intercontinental missile agreement signed by Nixon the previous May.
On July 11, 1973, during a speech at an American Bankers Association meeting, Fulbright criticized Capitol Hill attempts to block trade concessions to the Soviet Union until the country allows the emigration of Jews and other groups: "Learning to live together in peace is the most important issue for the Soviet Union and the United States, too important to be compromised by meddling — even idealistic meddling — in each other's affairs." In August, President Nixon announced his choice of Henry Kissinger to replace the retiring Rogers as Secretary of State. Ahead of the hearings, Kissinger was expected to have the advantage of cultivating relationships with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Vermont Senator George Aiken noting that Kissinger "met with us at Senator Fulbright's house for breakfast at least twice a year".
In November 1973, Fulbright endorsed the Middle East policy of Secretary of State Kissinger in a Senate speech, arguing in favor of the central requirement of a peace requirement prior to "another military truce hardens into another untenable and illusory status quo" and added that both sides would need to make concessions. Fulbright stated that Washington, Moscow and the United Nations were responsible for spearheading the peace settlement.
In May 1974, Fulbright disclosed the existence of a weapon stockpile for South Korea, South Vietnam and Thailand, the Defense Department releasing a statement three days later confirming Fulbright's admission. Throughout 1974, Kissinger was investigated for his possible role in initiating wiretaps of 13 Government officials and four newsmen from 1969 to 1971. In July, Fulbright stated nothing significant had emerged from the Kissinger testimony during his nomination for Secretary of State the previous fall and indicated his belief that opponents of détente with the Soviet Union were hoping to unseat Kissinger from the investigation into his role in the wiretapping.

Final election and later life

Fulbright left the Senate in 1974, after being defeated in the Democratic primary by then-Governor Dale Bumpers. His well-documented stances on Vietnam, the Middle East, and Watergate were out of step with the Arkansan majority, and the senator's campaign powers had atrophied. Bumpers won by a landslide. President Nixon mocked Fulbright's primary defeat while speaking to congressmen in the weeks following the loss.
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 international law at the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Hogan & Hartson from 1975–1993.
On May 5, 1993, President Bill Clinton presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Fulbright at his eighty-eighth birthday celebration from the Fulbright Association.

Death and legacy

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 some time 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."
Fulbright's ashes were interred at the Fulbright family plot in Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
In 1996, The George Washington University renamed a residence hall in his honor. The J. William Fulbright Hall is located 2223 H Street, N.W., at the corner of 23rd and H Streets. The Hall received historic designations as a District of Columbia historic site on January 28, 2010, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 18, 2010.
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. I'm quite sure I always lost, and yet he managed to make me think I might have won.

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 294,000 "Fulbrighters", 111,000 from the United States and 183,000 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 155 countries worldwide.
The Thank You Fulbright project was created in April 2012 to provide an annual opportunity for alumni and friends of the Fulbright program to celebrate Fulbright's legacy.

Honors

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