October 1 & 2 UVM Leahy Public Policy Forum Examines the Vietnam War Experiencefull story >>>

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October 1 & 2 UVM Leahy Public Policy Forum Examines the Vietnam War Experience

Free events will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning author, U.S. veterans, activists, the Vietnamese ambassador to the U.S., and Senator Leahy.

U.S. soldiers crossing a field in Vietnam during the war

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In early 1975, a young Patrick Leahy, only recently elected to his first term as a United States senator from Vermont, cast a deciding vote on the Senate Armed Services Committee that helped effectively end funding of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. Many years later Leahy, who would go on to become the third-longest serving U.S. senator in history, worked with fellow senators John McCain and John Kerry, prominent veteran activists, and others to reopen U.S. relations with Vietnam. This long, intimate involvement with the U.S.-Vietnam relationship helps frame a two-day forum at the University of Vermont that will examine many aspects of the Vietnam War, from the experience of those on the ground in Southeast Asia and the U.S. during the conflict, to current relations between the two countries.

The 2024 Leahy Public Policy Forum, titled "The U.S. War in Vietnam: Looking Back After 50 Years," will take place October 1 and 2 on the UVM campus, and is hosted by the university's Patrick Leahy Honors College.

The keynote lecture on October 1 will be delivered by David Maraniss, author of the book They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967. Maraniss is an associate editor at the Washington Post, where he was the winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. The lecture will take place at 7:00 p.m. in Carpenter Auditorium in the Given Building.

On October 2, the forum will present three panel discussions examining the different experiences of those who fought in the war, or protested it, or worked to deal with the problems and issues that persist for decades after the conflict. These panel discussions will each last one hour and will take place sequentially, beginning at 8:45 a.m. in Memorial Lounge in the Waterman Building. Opening remarks for the event will be delivered by Senator Leahy and the Ambassador of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, His Excellency Nguyen Quoc Dzung.

Erica Heilman, producer of "Rumble Strip" on Vermont Public, will moderate the first panel, which will focus on the experiences of Vermonters who fought in the war. The second panel will be moderated by Jane Lindholm, Vermont Public host and executive producer, and will examine the anti-war movement on U.S. campuses. Tim Reiser, who served as foreign policy aide to Senator Leahy and as democratic clerk for the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, will moderate the third panel, titled "The Things We Left Behind: Dealing with the Legacies of the War."

Both the October 1 keynote lecture and October 2 panel discussions are free and open to the public. More information is available at the Leahy Public Policy Forum site.