Another 50th anniversary occurring this year is of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. The Accords effectively ended direct US involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War was arguably the most galvanizing event of our undergraduate years. Regardless of one’s views on Vietnam, the War dominated much of our politics, culture, social attitudes and even things such as style and music trends. Now, with the added perspective of a half century, this panel will consider current views and analyses of that era of US involvement in Vietnam from a variety of different viewpoints, including those of historians, the military, artists and policy makers. It will also consider some of the long-term effects of the War on our politics, culture, race relations, and foreign and military policy.

The panel will be moderated by Yale Professor Beverly Gage '94, John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History, and recent recipient of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, as well as a Bancroft Prize for her latest book “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century.“ The panelists will be: our classmate, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University and host of the television series “Finding Your Roots“; Karl Marlantes ‘67, author of the widely acclaimed “Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War” as well as other books and the recipient of the Navy Cross, Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his service in Vietnam; Lien-Hang Nguyen, M.A. '00, Ph.D. ’08, Director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and author of “Hanoi’s War”, a fascinating and pathbreaking examination of the North Vietnamese leadership and their formulation of war policy; and Dr. John A. Nagl, a graduate of West Point who served in the Gulf War. He co-authored the new US Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual as part of a team overseen by Generals David Petraeus and James N. Mattis. He is also the author of “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam”. Now retired from the military, Dr. Nagl currently teaches at the Army War College.

Immediately after the program, the Yale Bookstore will be holding a pop-up sale where signed copies of books by the panelists will be available.