biography
| name: |
Fulbright, J(ames) William
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1905–95)
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| biography:
| US representative and senator, born in Sumner, Missouri, USA. He studied at the University of Arkansas and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, then taught law and became president of the University of Arkansas (1939–42). He served a term in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, Arkansas 1943–5). In 1944 he travelled to London as a member of a UN delegation to discuss postwar education. He went on to serve Arkansas in the US Senate (1945–74), and immediately sponsored a bill to establish international scholarly exchanges (1945), a programme still known by his name. Appointed chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1959), he performed a difficult balancing act by having to satisfy his conservative Southern constituency and his own more liberal inclinations. He conducted six days of nationally televised hearings before the committee in February 1966 about the rapid escalation of the war in Vietnam; the hearings marked a turning point in public discussion of the war issue, lending legitimacy to the anti-war movement. |
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