Views of Sen. Fulbright deliver wisdom for today

The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which oversees the Fulbright international educational exchange program, met recently at the University of Arkansas.

The highlight of the meeting was the signing of an agreement to strengthen relations between the scholarship board and the university. The statement of intent expands and solidifies the partnership.

The University and its Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences have long had strong ties to the exchange program, which grew out of legislation sponsored and nurtured by Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright, who served 32 years in Congress and earlier was University of Arkansas president. It is the flagship exchange program of the U.S. government, administered by the State Department under policies established by the scholarship board, with cooperation from binational commissions in 49 countries — plus U.S. embassies in more than 100 other countries. More than 375,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program since its inception in 1946, many going on to positions of importance around the world.

The scholarship board, composed of 12 educational and public leaders appointed by the U.S. president, establishes criteria for selection and approves candidates.

In 10 years on that board, including three as chairman, I saw firsthand the impact around the world — and met countless numbers of Fulbrighters playing important roles in their countries and internationally.

Special Collections of the University of Arkansas Libraries is the repository for the Fulbright papers and related collections. The scholarship board and State Department representatives learned more about these extensive holdings during their meetings, which took place at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History on the Fayetteville Square, which had a special Fulbright-related display and video. Former U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor is a member of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Gov. Asa Hutchinson and U.S. Rep. French Hill delivered video messages for the signing ceremony for the bipartisan program. Fulbright scholars at the UA, representing dozens of countries, provided an appropriate international background for the ceremony

Mark Waldrip, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas System, said, “The expanded partnership … will strengthen the tie between the international ‘Fulbright Family’ and Sen. Fulbright’s namesake college, creating a new era of collaboration and building stronger ties with the university system and the state.”

In conjunction with these events, the University of Arkansas Press launched a re-issue of Fulbright’s 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power.

Becoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1959, Fulbright was a key figure in that tumultuous era. He believed it important to speak out when you believe the nation is going in the wrong direction — that there is a duty to dissent when our priorities are out of order. In 1964, he published his first major book, Old Myths and New Realities, followed by The Arrogance of Power. It reportedly sold more than 400,000 copies. I became Fulbright’s press secretary soon thereafter and witnessed the broad interest the book generated.

Through his acclaimed books, speeches and televised committee hearings, he questioned the U.S. role in Vietnam and championed a more assertive Congress, and an America that sets an example. He wanted the world to see the finest image of America: “To me it is the image of a composite, or better still a synthesis of diverse peoples and cultures, come together in harmony but not identity — in an open, receptive, generous, and creative society.” The Arrogance of Power was and is a guidebook to Fulbright’s intensifying questioning of our foreign policy — specifically the rationale for our intervention in Vietnam. Many believe that this marked the beginning of a significant change in American attitudes about the war. The book was politically courageous and intellectually challenging. It effectively communicates Fulbright’s concerns and aspirations. His analysis and views are timeless and not without clear relevance today. Among the issues he addresses is the role of dissent in our society. He says criticism is more than a right. “It is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism.” Fulbright wrote: “To criticize one’s country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment.” It is a service because it may spur the country to do better, a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better.

Fulbright was concerned the United States was taking on imperial attitudes and that a unilateralist, sometimes belligerent approach characterized our international role and that this nation was becoming isolated from its traditional allies in Europe. Does that sound familiar?

Fulbright wrote, “One detects in Europe a growing uneasiness about American policy, a feeling that the United States is becoming unreliable and that it may be better … to keep Americans at a distance.”

Especially noteworthy is the chapter on the decline of the Senate, the legislative body he deeply revered. He said the Senate should revive and strengthen the deliberative function which it permitted to atrophy.

Fulbright believed strongly in the constitutional checks and balances and, in the best Arkansas tradition, valued a common-sense approach. “We all like telling people what to do, which is perfectly all right except that most people do not like being told what to do.”

Originally published more than 50 years ago, now re-issued by the University of Arkansas Press,The Arrogance of Power is a volume of enduring value, worthy of careful and continuing attention.