James Fulbright

1905-1995

U.S. Senator

James William Fulbright, US Senator, was born in Sumner, Missouri. Fulbright was educated in Arkansas, won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University and studied law at George Washington University. In 1942, he was elected to the House of Representatives, and entered the Senate in 1944.

He sponsored the Fulbright Act of 1946, which established an exchange scholarship system for students and educators between the United States and other countries. He opposed Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witchtrials" in the 1950s; and supported a more liberal foreign policy, especially toward communist China and Cuba. As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was one of the earliest critics of the war in Vietnam.

He published Old Myths and New Realities in 1965, and The Arrogance of Power in 1967.