Antiwar Research and Education
April 10, 2024
Watch on youtube by clicking here https://youtu.be/LrS2z3jFT1k
When US intervention in Indochina became controversial, the media, established academics , Congress and government officials had a shared narrative of supporting democracy against agression from Hanoi, an instrument of Communist masters in Moscow and Beijing.
As opposition grew among students, peace organizations and the religious community, a different narrative emerged about how and why the war was being fought. Teach-ins opened the door and an intellectual infrastructure followed based on contrarian scholars and political polemics.
A serious rebuttal to conventional wisdom was featured in the New York Review of Books and a new specialized publication Viet Report (1964-1968) founded by the late Carol Brightman and John McDermott. Dissidents within the academic community created the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars (1968-1979).Young independent researchers published persuasive studies under the auspicies of the Indochina Resource Center (1971-1976) in Washington that had a two way link with increasingly sympathetic Representatives, Senators and their staff.
The Quaker led American Friends Service Committee added a research and education component to its nationwide peace activism and humanitarian assistance in-country, National Action Research into the Military Industrial Complex (NARMIC). (1969-1980s)
In this webinar we will learn from former members of these projects about how they came about, their personal experience, the contribution to the antiwar movement and the impact on public opinion and Congressional debate
Linda Yarr, moderator, Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars, George Washington University
Beverley Gologorsky, editor of Viet Report, novelist, essayist
Martha Winnacker, Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, University of California
David Marr Indochina Resource Center, Australian National University
Bill Goodfellow, Indochina Resource Center, Center for International Policy
Le Anh Tu Packard, National Action Research into the Military Industrial Complex, Moody’s Analytics
Linda J Yarr is Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of Partnerships for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) at George Washington University, as well as a Research Affiliate of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the journal Critical Asian Studies, successor to the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars published by The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. She has written articles, book chapters and reviews on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. As a student in France during the war in Vietnam, she was a member of the Paris American Committee to Stop the War. She holds a master’s degree from Cornell University, an advanced degree in international relations from Sciences Po in Paris, and a B.A. from D’Youville College (now University).
Beverly Golodorsky was managing editor and editor of Viet Report and Leviathan in collaboration with Carol Brightman. She is the author of four acclaimed novels: “The Things We Do To Make It Home”, "Stop Here", "Everybody Has a Story" and "Can You See the Wind". Her novel “The Angle Of Falling Light,” will be published 2025. Recent essays include “1960s Turmoil,” in "Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from all Sides", editor, Christian G. Appy; “In the Whirlwind” in the anthology "The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women’s True-Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out, or Faded Away", editors, Jenny Offil & Elissa Schappell; and “In The Shadow of War,” published in TomDispatch, Huffington Post, Salon, The Nation, et al.. Gologorsky’s contribution to feminism noted in “Feminists Who Changed America” Ed. Barbara Love. Op-Ed Columns in Newsweek, Los Angeles Times. Hackney Literary Award for short story “Could Be Siberia”; Skyline Magazine publication of short story, “Not Calcutta”; Four cable television scripts on children and health for American Baby Magazine Show. Reviewed Books for: New York Times Book Review, Women’s Review of Books, The Nation Magazine
Martha Winnacker joined the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) as a first-year graduate student in the spring of 1968, just weeks after CCAS was formed. She was active in the Berkeley chapter until 1970, when she and her husband Paul left Berkeley to spend a year-and-a-half at the East Asian Seminar at the Free University of Berlin, where radical students and junior faculty had secured a controlling vote in the selection of new faculty, appearing to model the transformation we hoped to see in American academic institutions. The Winnackers then moved on to Tokyo, where they were active in the CCAS chapter and Martha volunteered as an English-language editor at Ampo, an international journal published in English by Japanese in solidarity with peace movements throughout Asia. Returning to the United States in the final weeks of the Vietnam War in 1975, she reconnected with CCAS in Berkeley and began volunteering at the Indochina Resource Center, eventually becoming part of its postwar staff.
She did not return to graduate school but remained connected to CCAS and its journal, the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, still publishing as Critical Asian Studies. She serves on the board of directors for the journal. In her professional life, Martha played a facilitating rather than an expert role, serving as an editor of the Southeast Asia Chronicle from 1977 to 1984, editor of the California Historical Society’s California History journal from 1985-1988, and as a grants administrator for the University of California’s Pacific Rim Research Program from 1989-1996. New opportunities within UC’s central administration led her to work on copyright, research publication policy, and digital communications policy.
In 2000, she entered law school, intending to specialize in intellectual property but finding other interests. After graduating and passing the California Bar exam in 2003, she clerked on the Alaska Court of Appeals in 2003-2004 and worked as an attorney for public defender legal aid agencies from 2005 through 2007. She returned to UC as executive director for the UC-wide Academic Senate from 2008 to 2014. Since her retirement in 2014, she has volunteered as an attorney with groups working on reform of the criminal justice and child welfare systems in California and as a Master Gardener.
David Marr studied at Dartmouth College (BA), before joining the US Marine Corps as an intelligence officer. Marr learned Vietnamese in the US, then was assigned to Vietnam in 1962.[3] He married there in April 1963, and was reassigned to marine Intelligence in Hawaii a month later. After leaving the Marines in 1964 he sought to understand the roots of Vietnamese patriotism as a graduate student at UC Berkeley (PhD 1968). He taught at University of California, Berkeley and as assistant professor at Cornell University, 1969–72, while becoming increasingly engaged in documenting the case for withdrawing from Viet Nam, notably as co-director of the Indochina Resource Center (Washington and Berkeley), 1971-5. In 1975 he moved to Australia with his family, in research positions as Fellow, Senior Fellow and finally Professor at the Research School of Pacific (and Asian) Studies, Australian National University in Canberra. He has also been editor of Vietnam Today. He is currently Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. (copied from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_G._Marr)
Bill Goodfellow is the director of the Afghanistan Peace Campaign. He is a veteran peace activist and non-profit organization executive. He was one of the founders of the Center for International Policy (CIP) in 1975 and was the executive director from 1985 to 2017. He oversaw all of CIP’s programs and fundraising and was the organization’s CEO.
He was the coordinator of the Afghanistan Study Group, which backed a negotiated political settlement in Afghanistan. He has testified before congressional committees and published op-ed articles in most major U.S. newspapers.
In the 1980s, Goodfellow promoted negotiations to end the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He worked closely with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and championed the Central American peace process in the United States. He attended all the Central American summit meetings and was in Guatemala City for the signing of the Esquipulas Peace Accord in August 1987.
From 1973 to 1975, Goodfellow was an associate at the Indochina Resource Center, an NGO in Washington staffed by academics and activists who produced scholarly research for the anti-Vietnam War movement. He spent the last six months of the war in Indochina and was evacuated from both Cambodia and Vietnam in the spring of 1975.
After the war ended, Tu went on to study economics at Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University. She worked for Wharton Econometrics, Chase Econometrics, and the WEFA Group. In the early 1990s Tu provided consulting services to the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and academic institutions on capacity building projects and multi-country studies to study the effects of globalization. In 2005 she joined Economy.com (Moody’s Analytics) where she played a lead role in improving the baseline and scenario forecasting process, developed proprietary measures of sovereign risk and fiscal space, edited the flagship Precis Macro publication, and wrote articles on international economic issues. She retired from Moody’s Analytics in 2017 and participates in community efforts to support local biodiversity by providing free native seeds and native plants to residents.
Resources
"Carol Brightman, 80, Dies; Profiled a Notable Writer and a Notable Band" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/books/carol-brightman-dead.html
The University at war (Part 1 of 3) Carol Brightman (editor of Viet Report magazine), Mike Klare (associate editor of Viet Report magazine), Mike Locker (lecturer), and Paul Rockwell discuss the role of American Universities in the Vietnam War. Universities are involved with actual military operations in Vietnam by applying social sciences and technological research which were used for propaganda and technologies. https://archive.org/details/pra-BB1739A
The University at war (Part 2 of 3) https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb1739b
The University at war (Part 3 of 3) https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/node/23571
On behalf of NARMIC, Arthur Kanegis testified at the The Winter Soldier hearing with doctor Burt Pfeiffer
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hn3csn2o188q3xx/Arthur%27s%20Winter%20Soldier%20testimony.rtf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yzcrfinfzg3j1jy/Arthur%27s%20Winter%20Soldier%20Part%202.rtf?dl=0
or
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_11_Weapons.html
Pete Seeger, Bring Them Home click here https://youtu.be/LYfUlGORKkw
***************************
Chat
Ken Brociner Since neither of these two organizations have yet been mentioned (as of 7:00 EST), I'd like to give a shout -out to the Indochina Peace Campaign and the United Campaign to Stop Funding the War (if I got the name right).
paul shannon to Hosts and panelists : yes AFSC is putting out excellent research on weapons makers making the arms being used to destroy Gaza. A fantastic source of information
Michael Klare : The Forum on the Arms Trade provides detailed info on US arms trade
John McAuliff : Indochina Peace Campaign and the United Campaign to Stop Funding the War will be the topic of another webinar
Jay Wilber : Strong ties with the German student and antiwar movement... SDS with "SDS..."
Earl Martin to Hosts and panelists : Thanks to all of you. So many good memories, good learnings. That era is still alive in our spirits asd we are active with local and national efforts weekly on the war in Gaza.
Tom Grunfeld to Hosts and panelists : 1975-1996 the Third Indochina War to punish VN for winning the war.
From Jay Wilber : Still a POW-MIA flag at City Hall in Cambridge! And a chair in the entry! No politician dares to be the first to propose finally taking it away, evidently!
Tom Grunfeld to Hosts and panelists : The flags are in every post office in my area.
Lady Borton : We tend to forget that Việt Nam first had peace in 1990. Between 1975 and 1989, Việt Nam had war on two fronts -- Cambodia and China, with the US involvement in politically backing the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese.
Jay Wilber : Hugh Thompson in the house.
Earl Martin : Warm appreciation to all of you for your powerful, heartfelt work for peace in Vietnam over the years!
paul shannon : In Quang Mai the Bartons and Quinn-Judges provided invaluable information — roger and jackie chagnon
Earl Martin : In Quang Ngai we felt clearly that the Saigon forces were trying to expand territory after the peace accords. We documented that on the ground.
Jay Wilber : We have very ruthless ruling elites.
Alex Knopp : Thank you for joining everyone!
Nguyet Nguyen : Thank you!
Nguyet Nguyen : Take care everyone.
Susan Cushman to Hosts and panelists : Thank you for the informative presentation.
***********************
Q & A
* Ken Brociner What re-considerations, if any, have you arrived at - in regard to the North Vietnamese - since the end of the war?
* Jay Wilber Is there a NARMIC equivalent today? If not, anyone considering re-establishing something similar?
* Jay Wilber I hope something will be said about Ngo Vinh Long (perhaps he's attending?) and his publication, and how he was later perilously attacked at an appearance at Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1981/5/8/investigate-the-attack-pbto-the-editors/
https://www.bangordailynews.com/2022/10/25/bangor/umaine-ngo-vinh-long-obit-xoasq1i29i/
[Long passed away October 12, 2022.]
Just realized that.
"Remembering Ngô Vĩnh Long, Renowned Scholar of Vietnam and Antiwar Activist" by An Thùy Nguyễn & Douglas Allen https://web.archive.org/web/20230217064951/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14672715.2023.2167220
*Alex Knopp One of the useful resource formats first developed by NARMIC in 1969 or 1970 was the then (!) high-tech “slideshow,” which enabled both the delivery of much information and a live-person delivery using a predrafted script. This combined hard informatin with live discussion— sort of a power point for the 1970’s! Later in the Indochine Peace Campaign we devleoped the same type of slideshow about the war that was drafted originally by Tom Hayden. I recall giving the IPS show to dozens of audiences for IPC in Philadelphia where I worked with John McAuliff, Jack Malinowski and many others.
My mother Honey Knopp helped start NARMIC with Stewart Meacham and Anne Flitcraft at AFSC and she was always very proud of its contributions.
* Jay Wilber The role of the (disenchanted) establishment and antiwar journalism in the establishment media (Cronkite, etc...) in moving toward an end to the war
* An Nguyen Thank you all for your wonderful talks and, of course, for your contribution to ending the war in Vietnam. I have two questions for Tu Packard. Bill Goodfellow, and David Marr regarding your work and research for NARMIC and IRC, respectively.
1. You described some of the sources that you consulted in writing your reports, which was very helpful. My question is: Did you - and to what extent - rely on sources provided by Vietnamese people or groups in South Vietnam (besides Thời Báo Gà)? Who were some of these people and/or groups?
2. Over the past 2 decades, there has been a new wave of Vietnam-centric revisionist histories, represented by works such as “Hanoi’s War,” that blames most of the wartime violence and aggression, as well as the failure of the Paris Peace Agreements, on Hanoi. In other words, it was Hanoi, rather than Saigon and the U.S., that first violated the Peace Agreements and was determined to win by force. Based on the research you did, especially on the 1973-1975 period, do you think there is veracity to those claims?
* David Hawk For Martha, What did the inclusion of “critical theory” bring to the analysis of imperialism in Asia?
* Jay Wilber Campaigning here in Cambridge against Elbit, an Israeli weapons company.
* John Kim Did any of you study the costs of US war in Indochina? Total costs--both here and abroad.
* Alex Knopp Peggy Duff had been the main staff person for the “Tribune” movement of the left-wing section of the British Labour Party in the 1950’s and 60’s, supporting first the campaign for Nucear Disarmament and the Alderson Marches and later the anti-Vietnam War movdement that pressured Harold Wilson to keep British troops out of the Vietnam War. The name of this movement’s publication was “The Tribune.” Her most prominent insurgent left member of Parliament was Tony Benn.
* Doug Allen During the 60s, 70s, etc., didn’t msny in CCAS and others present pay some attention and express solidarity with anti-imperialist and liberation movements in South Africa, Central and South America, and elsewhere?
* Doug Allen It seemed that Vietnamese sources were not emphasized sufficiently.
* Jay Wilber What are participants' views on the historiography attributing military escalation by Vietnam liberation forces to the domination of Le Duan?
No comments:
Post a Comment