During his career, Fox described himself as a "pragmatic meliorist" who believed in the possibility of improving how international relations were conducted and in highlighting the normative meanings of domestic and world policies. Former colleague and dean David Truman later said, "He was an impressive scholar with a tremendous range. He was interested in the whole political scene, not just international relations, and was always full of ideas about how to do things better." One of his longtime courses at Columbia was called "Systematic World Politics"; as it evolved, its reading list gave more space to issues such as imperialism, International inequality, and limited global resources, but always focused at the end upon the range of choices for future world orders. Towards the end of his career at Columbia, he developed an explicit focus on moral concerns and human rights, giving courses such as "Means and Ends in International Relations" and "Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy".