A warm breeze swept over the second-story patio bridging the Heartwood Inn and Institute for the Liberal Arts. Servers in black collared shirts carried platters made of tree slices—bark intact—bearing chicken skewers and crab cakes. Clusters of scholars, alumnae/i and students spoke in soft tones, meandering in and out of the sliding glass doors leading from the Institute onto the patio. A group of academics in sports coats and sensible dresses gathered for a photo; as the camera snapped, the breeze carried a shower of flowers up behind them as though signaled by the photographer.
It was the reception of a history conference, “Remembering the American War in Vietnam: A 50-Year Retrospective,” running Thursday, April 24, to Saturday, April 26. It marked, almost to the day, the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which ended the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975. For the occasion, Vassar Professor of History and International Relations Robert Brigham brought some of the leading experts on the Vietnam War, as well as Vietnam veterans and journalists who covered the war, to the College to discuss the era and how it has shaped U.S. history and society.
Brigham explained, “It was very important to me that we commemorate this anniversary with not just your usual academic conference, but one that relied on a really high level intellectual engagement, coupled with experienced veterans in both military and press who had also written extensively about the war. That’s a pretty rare combination of people.”
Over the three days, 412 people attended, mostly presenters, alumnae/i—many of whom traveled to Vietnam this spring with Brigham and his wife, artist Monica Church—and the 50-odd students in Brigham’s “Viet Nam War” course. After the reception was the keynote speech by Harvard University Professor of International Affairs and History Fred Logevall. Friday and Saturday included two panels of historians, a panel each of Vietnam veterans and journalists and a closing speech by Brigham.
Introducing Logevall, Brigham recalled a panelist asking him, “Isn’t Vassar going to catch on that you just invited your friends?” He continued, “But my friends are these people, and they are also, if I’m drawing a list of the people that you would have in such a commemoration, it’s the same list.” Brigham told The Miscellany News, “One of the many blessings about being a professor of the Vietnam War for so long—I’ve been doing this for forty years—is that you do develop lifelong friendships… We literally exchange texts and emails and phone calls daily. These are my closest friends.” Throughout the conference, the overwhelming feeling was one of having walked into a private gathering. Panelists and audience members called one another by their first names, in warm, intimate tones; jokes were frequent.
This conference—and the Vietnam War in general—has another, even more personal layer for Brigham. Brigham was adopted as a child and became interested in the Vietnam era at a young age. His biological father was a prominent photographer during the war and Brigham’s first college paper was on one of his father’s photos; many of his other papers later used photos taken by his father. Amazingly, Brigham did not know the identity of his biological father, or that his work had been entwined so closely with his father’s so for long, until only a few years ago. On Saturday evening, Brigham closed the conference with this story and thanked many in the room for being there for him throughout this process. He, and many others, began to cry.
Brigham will be releasing a memoir in April 2026. Julianna Aguja ’25, who worked on the memoir as Brigham’s research assistant from her sophomore to senior year and found both Brigham’s original birth certificate and a photo of his father he had never before seen, reflected, “It just felt like, in a lot of ways, a really nice way to end my time at Vassar… It was just really amazing to see how the story has developed and how now he’s able to share this with people.” Brigham said of Julianna, “I could not, literally could not, have written this memoir without her.”
It was simultaneously a rigorous academic conference. Panelists gave lectures condensing decades of scholarship, with titles like “The Vietnam War as a Problem of Language” (Greg Daddis, San Diego State University), “The Lesson of History: Remembering Vietnam in the 21st Century” (David Kieran, Columbus State University) and “The War within the War: Race in Vietnam” (Beth Bailey, University of Kansas). A table was stacked with the panelists’ books for sale, most of them emblazoned with prizes; Logevall’s book, “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam,” won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in History.
To Brigham, the mixture of high academia and conviviality was central to the event. “I can’t imagine doing something on Vassar’s campus without the students being front and center,” he commented. “We wanted to build that sense that we were kind of all in this together, learning and teaching together, kind of replicating a Vassar classroom.” Throughout the event, students spoke casually with presenters. Peter Osnos, a formidable journalist, author, editor and publisher who reported on the war, shook hands with students and asked them about coming of age in the 21st century; Ben Masur ’27 consulted with Logevall on a research paper. Masur recalled, “Having this more relaxed atmosphere allowed us to be more inquisitive… We learned so much after just three days of listening and asking questions.”
“It made me feel really excited, even more excited to enter academia—even though it’s kind of a crazy time to be doing that,” described Aguja, who will begin her Ph.D. in history at Yale University this fall. “It just made me really excited to meet other scholars in my field, and start building those personal and professional relationships.”
“It was wonderful,” said Brigham of the conference. “I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out.”
An idea panelists frequently returned to was that the Vietnam era was uniquely impactful in U.S. history with especially strong contemporary reverberations. In his keynote address, Logevall argued, “Many of the troubles that plague our nation today…mistrust of government and one another, constant questioning of one another’s motives…a lack of accountability and powerful institutions. I’m not going to say they all originated with the Vietnam War, but I do think they have roots in the Vietnam era.” Logevall speaks with the deliberate emphasis of a practiced public speaker; even his pauses sound purposeful. “It’s not just about its contemporary resonance, it’s also about the history… I think there are still outstanding questions. Conferences like this, which bring together a number of specialists, can help us deepen our understanding, can help us answer some of these questions that I think are still contentious,” Logevall told The Miscellany News. “The Vietnam chapter has much to teach us.”
Additional reporting by Bodie Morein.