Word: vietnams
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While in Saigon, Woodside observed aspects of the war and began Vietnamese friendships that complicated his uncertainties about American involvement. His initial interest in Vietnam was, of course, scholarly, not political, but he had been troubled since 1963 by parallels between Vietnam and China in the late 1940s. While in Saigon, he witnessed massive student demonstrations against the Saigon government and the United States. Still, his misgivings did not blossom into full opposition to the war. One reason was the ambivalence of his Vietnamese friends--"intellectuals who feared repression if Communists took over, even though they hated the Saigon regime...
...impossible." When he returned to Harvard that year and began his thesis, he started demonstrating and speaking at teach-ins. He joined the faculty as an instructor in the fall of 1968, just when the peace movement was gaining momentum. The next spring, he offered the first sessions of "Vietnam...
Woodside divided the course into three sections: pre-colonial Vietnam, the French colonial period, and then, the war. He found that his students, most of whom were drawn to the course out of antiwar sentiments, were receptive to his efforts to teach the war's cultural context. "My only regret is that so little of Vietnamese culture has been translated into English," Woodside says. "That makes it very hard to get the Vietnamese experience across...
Some faculty members apparently felt that such objectivity was impossible with Vietnam, and although Woodside says he has been conscious only of the support of several professors--in particular, Fairbank, John Womack Jr. '59, Ernest R. May, and H. Stuart Hughes--his appointment to a tenured position last spring reportedly ran into strenuous opposition from faculty members who did not consider Vietnamese history a serious enough field. At the executive session, Fairbank--who chuckles, calls the story "gossip," and declines to confirm or deny it--reportedly stood, told his colleagues that Vietnamese history was important and that Woodside...
...Saigon prepared to surrender, the last lecture of "Vietnam" for 1975 was ending. Woodside facing an even larger crowd than usual, drew smile with his mixing of Eastern and Western images--"A grand Confucian funeral makes a Hollywood funeral seem emotionally modest," he explained a one point. As 1:00 drew near, he skipped some points, and began speaking faster. When the bells of Memorial Church started ringing, he still has more...