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.

[5] 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.

[5] 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.

Fulbright would like to see the United States obtain only non-material benefits from Lend-Lease, namely, political commitments from the countries receiving it, that would enable a system of post-war collective security to be set up.

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.

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.

[20] In this hearing, McCarthy aggressively questioned Fulbright, whom he frequently referred to as "Senator Halfbright",[21] over the composition of the board clearing students for funding and on a policy that bars communists and their sympathizers from receiving appointments as lecturers and professors.

[b]"[30] Historian William R. Smyser suggests that Fulbright's comment may have been made at President Kennedy's behest, as a signal to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev that the wall would be an acceptable means of defusing the Berlin Crisis.

He alone, in his role as teacher and moral leader, can hope to overcome the excesses and inadequacies of a public opinion that is all too often ignorant of the needs, the dangers, and the opportunities in our foreign relations.

It is imperative that we break out of the intellectual confines of cherished and traditional beliefs and open our minds to the possibility that Basic Changes in Our System may be essential to meet the requirements of the 20th century.Fulbright met with Kennedy during the latter's visit to Fort Smith, Arkansas in October 1961.

[further explanation needed][41] In May 1964, Fulbright predicted that time would see a cessation in the misunderstanding within the relationship between France and the United States and that French President Charles de Gaulle was deeply admired for his achievements despite confusion that might arise in others from his rhetoric.

[26] On 4 August 1964, 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.

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 so dent the appeal of Goldwater by denying him of his main avenue of attack.

[44] On 6 August 1964, Fulbright gave a speech on the Senate floor that called 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.

[47] Nelson wanted to insert an amendment to bar the president from sending troops to fight in Vietnam unless he obtained the permission of Congress first and said that he did not like the open-ended nature of this resolution.

[55] In contrast to his hostile attitudes towards Fulbright, Johnson was afraid of being labeled as soft on communism and so tended to try to appease Stennis and the hawks, who kept pressuring for more-and-more aggressive measures in Vietnam.

[60] Despite his success with Clifford, Fulbright was close to despair as he wrote in a letter to Erich Fromm that this "literally a miasma of madness in the city, enveloping everyone in the administration and most of those in Congress.

[61] McNamara was subpoenaed, and the televised hearings led to "fireworks" as Fulbright repeatedly asked difficult answers about De Soto raids on North Vietnam and Operation 34A.

[64] Through Rusk was scheduled to testify about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the previous day in The New York Times had appeared a leaked story that Westmoreland had requested for Johnson to send 206,000 more troops to Vietnam.

"[73] Fulbright called for the second round of the Moratorium protests scheduled for 15 November to be canceled for fear that Nixon was planning to start a riot to discredit the antiwar movement.

[74] The protests in the 15th went ahead and were peaceful, but the success of Nixon's "silent majority speech" left Fulbright depressed as he wrote at the time that "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.

"[75] In 1970, Daniel Ellsberg offered Fulbright his copy of the Pentagon Papers to ask him to insert them into the Congressional Record, which would allow the media to cite them without fear of prosecution for publishing secret documents.

In his address introducing the resolution, Fulbright said, "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.

[80] In October, Defense Department officials disclosed publication of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee showing the United States entered a 1960 agreement supporting a 40,000-man Ethiopian army in addition to beginning Ethiopia's opposition to threats against its territorial integrity.

[81] 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 their position on Vietnam.

"[84] 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.

[102][dubious – discuss] According to biographer Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright believed the South was not yet ready for integration but that education would eventually eradicate prejudice and allow blacks to "take their rightful place in American society.

He, along with John Sparkman, Lister Hill, and Price Daniel, submitted a version that acknowledged theirs was a minority position and pledged to fight the Brown ruling through legal means.

In later years, he insisted his intervention had led to a more moderate version of the Manifesto than Thurmond originally proposed, and his claims were generally accepted by Arkansan black leadership.

[103] Fulbright was one of only two Southern members of Congress to condemn the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 by white supremacists that killed four girls and injured between 14 and 22 other people.