Organizer: Global Vietnam Studies at Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY

Description:

In a historic gathering of scholars, filmmakers, and key historical figures, Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) will host a public panel discussion on Thursday, May 1, 2025, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the 30th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation. The program is organized by Global Vietnam Studies at WEAI in collaboration with Columbia Global, the Columbia Journalism School, and the School of the Arts.

Participants include documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, co-directors of the 10-part, 18-hour documentary series The Vietnam War (2017); reconciliation advocate Lo Khac Tam, a former Lieutenant General in the People’s Army of Vietnam; historian and Columbia University professor Lien-Hang T. Nguyen; and Thomas Vallely, Senior Advisor for Global Vietnam Studies at WEAI, co-founder of Fulbright University Vietnam, and former U.S. Marine (Silver Star recipient).

The discussion will focus on how scholarship about the war has changed our understanding of the conflict, including how Burns, Novick, and their collaborators navigated the unsettled events of the war, framed roughly between the publication of the Library of America’s two-volume Reporting Vietnam anthology in 1998 and the new scholarship presented in The Cambridge History of The Vietnam War (2024), for which Professor Nguyen served as general editor.

Panelists will reflect on how fresh research and widening perspectives continually revise our understanding of a conflict whose reverberations are still being felt half a century after hostilities formally ended.

There will be closing remarks by Wafaa El-Sadr, Executive Vice President of Columbia Global.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and co-sponsored by Columbia Global. This event is part of the three-day series 50-30: From War to Peace in Vietnam and the United States, April 30 – May 2, 2025.

Speakers:

• Ken Burns, Co-director and producer of The Vietnam War series

• Lynn Novick, Co-director and producer of The Vietnam War series

• Sarah Botstein, Co-director and producer of The Vietnam War series

• Ho Dang Hoa, Co-producer of The Vietnam War series and Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Research

• Mai Elliot 

• Lo Khac Tam 

• Nancy Biberman 

• Roger Harris
  

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here.