Humanities West Presents Lessons Unlearned: The 50th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War
There clearly are lessons that we have learned from the Vietnam War that we have applied well to other situations, but there are also lessons that we think we have learned that are far less clear, and could lead to similar outcomes if we are not careful.
The Vietnam War certainly cast a pall over America, but much more so over all of Southeast Asia. Back then the enemy was seen as Communism. Now the enemy has transformed into various political movements along the far end of the authoritarian spectrum―whose understandable but deceptive attractiveness during moments of despair has even begun finding many adherents among us.
To head off that unfortunate development, join us in asking: Which foreign policies could we adopt that would make the freest end of the spectrum of democratic civilizations more robust, more stable and more desirable? And where does the development and use of military power fit into those foreign policies to achieve our civilizational goals?
Humanities West presents a variety of expert opinions on these important issues while reviewing what went wrong, and what went right, during the Vietnam War that ended so abruptly on April 30, 1975.
Join us for two nights, on April 30 and May 2, to hear six experts review what we have learned, and what we have not, about the Vietnam War.
Mark Atwood Lawrence
Professor of History and Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas, The University of Texas at Austin; Former Director, LBJ Presidential Library and Museum; Author, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era
Elizabeth Cobbs
Dwight E. Stanford Emerita Professor, San Diego State University; Former Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former Member, Historical Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department and Jury for the Pulitzer Prize in History; Award-winning Documentary Filmmaker; Author of nine books, including American Umpire
Yale H. Ferguson
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Global and International Affairs, Rutgers University; Honorary Professor, University of Salzburg; Previously Visiting Fellow: University of Cambridge, Norwegian Nobel Institute, University of Padua; Author or Co-Author of 12 books, including with Richard Mansbach, Globalization: The Return of Borders to a Borderless World? Remapping Global Politics, The Web of World Politics; and (forthcoming) War and Political Evolution from the Ancient Mediterranean to the Contemporary World
George Hammond
Author, Conversations With Socrates—Moderator
