Randall Bennett Woods. Fulbright: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xi + 711 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-48262-2. Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson Published on H-Diplo (August, 1996) Randall Woods' Fulbright: A Biography is moved to Washington to be near Betty Williams, a more than seven hundred pages long, yet it is Philadelphian who would become his wife of hard to put down. Woods is not only a careful stu‐ more than ffty years. After graduation from dent of Fulbright's place in the history of U.S. for‐ George Washington law school, Fulbright re‐ eign policy, but he is also a fellow Arkansan who turned home to become president of the Universi‐ understands Fulbright in the context of his place ty of Arkansas at age thirty-four. and time. There are no revelations here, but the After being forced out of that office for politi‐ exhaustive research, clear prose, and mature cal reasons, Fulbright got himself elected to Con‐ scholarship make this book the definitive account gress in 1942, where he became a member of the of Fulbright's life. Foreign Affairs Committee. A bold young interna‐ James William (but always Bill) Fulbright, the tionalist, Fulbright garnered immediate national youngest of four children, was born April 9, 1905, attention by sponsoring the House resolution that to a well-to-do banking family in Fayetteville, Ar‐ would lead to the creation of the United Nations. kansas. A bright student and a fne athlete (Ful‐ Fulbright launched his long Senate career in bright was a near scratch golfer into his sixties), 1944 by defeating the man who had forced him Bill starred in football at the University of Arkan‐ out of the university presidency. Determined to sas, joined virtually every club on campus, and assume a leadership role, Fulbright sponsored became student body president. He graduated at legislation creating the scholarship program that age nineteen with a degree in history. would bear his name for generations. Funded Arguably the formative event in Fulbright's through the sale of wartime surplus abroad, the life was his selection as a Rhodes Scholar in 1924. scholarship program placed the United States at The young man studied history and politics at Ox‐ the center of postwar intellectual and cultural ex‐ ford, excelled in lacrosse, and emerged from his change. years abroad as a confirmed Atlanticist. Fulbright H-Net Reviews Following the Republican takeover of Con‐ potentially disastrous consequences and urged gress in the 1946 elections, Fulbright stunned his Kennedy to reject the plan. Ever after, Fulbright Democratic colleagues--and established his well- distrusted the Central Intelligence Agency. deserved reputation as a maverick--by suggesting Surprisingly, Fulbright sided with the hawks that Harry Truman ought to resign. Fulbright was on the Cuban missile crisis, arguing that a block‐ trying to make a case for the parliamentary sys‐ ade of the island was an insufficient response. tem, but Truman reviled him as an "overeducated Woods charges that Fulbright's position would Oxford S.O.B." have led logically to nuclear war. It seems clear Despite the rift Fulbright emerged, as Woods that Fulbright did not function at his best in times notes, "in the front rank of America's cold war‐ of crisis, where he was often caught off-stride. riors" (p. 152). He embraced the Truman Doctrine Fulbright's strength was overall conceptualization as well as the Marshall Plan and worried about of foreign policy. Following resolution of the mis‐ Soviet ability to exploit power vacuums in the sile crisis, Fulbright shepherded the limited nucle‐ postwar world. Fulbright endorsed U.S. interven‐ ar test ban treaty through the Senate. tion in Korea, but without enthusiasm, as his Alarmed by the militant chauvinism that Bar‐ doubts about crusading American globalism be‐ ry Goldwater embodied, Fulbright campaigned gan to emerge. tirelessly for his former Senate majority leader, The actions of Dwight Eisenhower and John Lyndon Johnson. Warding off the Right Wing was Foster Dulles, let alone Joe McCarthy, reinforced one of Fulbright's central aims in smoothing the those doubts. The junior senator from Arkansas path for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964. Ful‐ decried a national obsession with communism, bright supported containment in Vietnam, but which fueled Cold War militarization and over‐ failed to foresee the implications of the presiden‐ shadowed economic and cultural programs that tial blank check. Later, when it became clear that he championed. With his rational, intellectual Johnson had deceived him about the incidents in style, Fulbright could not abide the emotional the gulf, Fulbright was livid. anti-communism of Dulles, whom he judged While Fulbright sharply opposed escalation in "pompous,self-righteous, and inept" (p. 224). Vietnam, it was the 1965 Dominican intervention By the time he became head of the Senate For‐ that "destroyed his relationship with Lyndon eign Relations Committee (SFRC) in 1959--a posi‐ Johnson" (p. 385). When the SFRC chairman then tion he would hold for twenty-five years, longer called his publicized hearings on the war, the rift than anyone else in U.S. history--Fulbright was a became permanent. Johnson labeled the staunch advocate of detente. It was a position Arkansan an isolationist, ostracized him from from which he never wavered. To Fulbright, there White House functions, and ordered FBI surveil‐ simply was no alternative to seeking common lance of Fulbright and other doves. ground with the other great powers, regardless of Fulbright resented attacks on his patriotism the ideological gulf. and civil liberties, but bore them with courage. He John Kennedy came close to offering Ful‐ condemned the "McCarthy-type crusade" against bright the position of secretary of state, but the war critics and stepped up his campaign against Arkansan lacked enthusiasm for the post. Ful‐ militarization, both in Vietnam and as a general‐ bright knew himself well and relished his position ized phenomenon in American culture. After re‐ as an independent thinker on foreign affairs. ceiving a cool reception before a packed house at Briefed by the incoming administration on the the National War College, Fulbright condemned proposed Bay of Pigs operation, Fulbright saw the those who wrapped themselves in the fag while 2 H-Net Reviews charging proponents of legitimate dissent with George McGovern, and other doves, Fulbright undermining soldiers in the field. drove the legislation that fnally reined in the im‐ The Fulbright hearings, his own statements, perial presidency, a process that culminated in and popular books such as The Arrogance of Pow‐ the War Powers Act in 1973. er (1966) made Fulbright a critical voice in a tu‐ The long campaign against the war left Ful‐ multuous time. He was routinely praised, con‐ bright, at age sixty-eight, exhausted. In 1974 he demned, and threatened with his life. With the as‐ mounted an uninspired reelection campaign in sistance of key aides such as Carl Marcy and Seth which popular Arkansas governor Dale Bumpers Tillman, the encouragement of intellectual com‐ soundly defeated him. Americans were sick of patriots such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Wal‐ Vietnam and anything or anyone associated with ter Lippmann, and the constant support of his it. African Americans and proponents of Israel, wife, Fulbright never compromised his views. which Fulbright condemned for refusing to dis‐ The Arkansan's attitudes on race did change, gorge lands taken in the 1967 Six-Day War, voted but the process was painfully slow. Fulbright's re‐ against him in droves. sistance to racial progress was undoubtedly his Fulbright had already sensed that a new polit‐ greatest failure. Woods handles the issue well, be‐ ical order was passing him by. He lamented the ginning with the blunt statement that Fulbright "new breed of legislator" who aimed "not to con‐ was indisputably a racist. His racism was not vis‐ vey an idea but to project an image" (p. 682). Such ceral, but rather a product of ignorance and lack a style was foreign to the maverick intellectual of empathy for the African American experience. from Arkansas. Fulbright remained in Washing‐ Fulbright voted and flibustered against virtu‐ ton but no longer commanded the spotlight. In a ally every civil rights reform that came before moving ceremony in May 1993, another former him in the 1950s and 1960s. His northern intellec‐ Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas, President Bill tual friends liked to dismiss the Arkansan's voting Clinton, pinned the Medal of Freedom on the old record as acts of political necessity, but Woods statesman's chest. Fulbright suffered a massive persuasively argues that Fulbright voted his con‐ stroke later that year and died in 1995. science. Woods' analysis of Fulbright is sharp and bal‐ Race relations and other domestic issues, anced, drawing the appropriate contrast between however, were secondary to foreign policy for the forward-thinking philosopher of foreign af‐ Fulbright, as they were for Richard Nixon. Ful‐ fairs and the backsliding segregationist. Ultimate‐ bright hoped to work with Nixon to end the car‐ ly, Woods perceives Fulbright as a pragmatic intel‐ nage in Southeast Asia before realizing, to his hor‐ lectual striving for a reasoned international or‐ ror, that the new president would take American der. involvement to irrational extremes. The punish‐ Woods' focus on Fulbright's racism and the ing bombing, revelations of U.S. atrocities, and the long campaign against the Vietnam War over‐ destruction of Cambodia sickened Fulbright. shadows perhaps Fulbright's most significant Fulbright abandoned his former advocacy of legacy. His sponsorship of the UN resolution, the an enclave strategy in favor of simply getting out. foreign scholarship program, and his campaign Unlike Nixon and Henry Kissinger, with whom he against militarism reflected his belief that educa‐ established a close relationship, Fulbright insisted tion, cultural dissemination, and rational dis‐ that, in the new era of detente, withdrawal from course among nations were the building blocks of Vietnam would have little impact on American a stable international order.