i mean, for example, jesus never explicitly condemned it, so it must be in accordance with the teachings of jesus. you know there was an , abolitionist reading of the bible as well too. these were counter readings, but there's much, much on this. and i by the way, i recommend to , everyone a book that's coming out soon. henry wincheck, who wrote a book about washington and its slaves, is bringing out a book next month about jefferson and his slaves, and it addresses not jefferson's religiosity, because he didn't have any, but jefferson, the way jefferson who considered himself a enlightened man, really dealt with his slaves. there's a lot of new things in that book coming up. thank you. thank you, everyone. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer 1: history bookshelf features the best known american history writers of the past

decade talking about their books. you can watch our series at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. announcer 2: three college professors discuss the ways they teach about u.s. involvement in the vietnam war. panelists talk about their personal participation in peace and antiwar movements and how those experiences translate into their classrooms. this discussion was part of a conference in washington, dc posted in conjunction with the waging peace in vietnam traveling exhibit. >> and with that, i want to begin with two things. first, there are so many people here to credit. there are so many people who helped create exhibit which is now on the second floor in the atria. if you haven't seen it, we invite you to go down during

lunch, take a look at it. you have heard a lot about the book "waging peace in vietnam." com, what you haven't heard about the publisher which is new village press, distributed by nyu. we are fortunate to have the director of the press lynn elizabeth in the back of the room. [applause] me last december, having heard about the exhibit and said she wanted to turn that into a companion book. and that if i could get her polished manuscript by march 1, from december 3 to march 1, she would put it in her fall catalog. it would be available for this in september.ting

we did, and it was, and i acknowledged earlier david cortright is here today, but not at this very moment. other editor barbara doherty is here. [applause] the fierce timekeeper. and i am here. and so are many of the folks who appear in the book, including cora weiss. including paul cox and susan and phil short who took 17 of the photographs that appear in this book. when you go back and buy your copy, any one of them would be willing to sign your book. that, let me say it is a real pleasure for me to

who is a linda yaar research professor here at gw largelywu and who is responsible for this week long set of events. much ian't tell you how am a fan of hers, how in our iem, -- how in awe i am, what a good job she has done putting this together. scientist,litical specialist in southeast asia and has for decades fostered academic engagement -- think of that, engagement -- in international affairs, teaching, research with china, vietnam, myanmar and other countries in asia. is an extraordinary

person. linda yaar. [applause] linda: thank you. you are too kind. the genesis of so many ideas that brought this week to life, i owe to you. i appreciate your involving me in this effort. we are gathered for this panel to take a look at some of the ways that we can teach about the war in vietnam. shortly after the war in bytnam, if we measure it 1975, there was a real effort to forget. maybe not forgive but certainly to forget. proposed a course -- 1985, i proposed a course.

one of the assignments i gave to students was to do an oral history. to go and interview someone who had been in the peace movement, who had fought in the war, who had been in the home front so to speak. in the class itself i was able whoring in a green beret spoke of his experiences. i had sam brown who happened to the time,in denver at leader of the peace movement, and someone who had recently migrated from vietnam with a number of refugees following the war. one student came up to me and said, you know at break, i went home and was telling my parents i had this awful test i had to do an oral history into no food interview. and her mother said, why don't you talk to your father? >> [laughter] linda: that shows how there was

this conscious kind of holding back and trying to erase in some ways what was happening. so now as we heard the tremendous opportunity that scholars now have two draw on local sources, the sources from the former soviet union and so forth, and we heard the extent of scholarship that really needs to help us in part to students today. heream very glad to have scholars who have not only, researching work that is relevant to these topics but are heavily engaged in teaching the new generation. to my immediate left is carolyn eisenberg, professor of u.s. history and american foreign-policy at hofstra

university. she has the author of a prize-winning book, drawing the lines, the american decision to divide germany. never lose,ing book nixon, kissinger and the illusion of international security, and she was a contributor to the book. waging peace. her is michael kazen -- next to her is michael kazin. we always say the other george. he is a scholar who is an expert of u.s. politics and social movements. his most recent book is the war against war, the american fight 19 14 to 1918.

it was the war to end all wars. his previous book was american dreamers, how the left changed a nation and it was named best book for the new republic newsweek, daily beast and the progressive. he is also an editor of the review defense. i have to apologize to all of you and to peter kuznick for the technical difficulties that will introduce then to film we would have benefited from. professor -- professor kuznick is a professor of history and founder and director of the nuclear studies institute at american university. he has authored several -- he was books on

active in the civil war and entech vietnam war movements -- anti-vietnam war movements. his current projects include a book on scientists in the vietnam war. so i think we will have a rich discussion. and let me turn it over to professor eisenberg. with -- are people ok >> i was asking about just sitting comfortably and in formally at this table rather than speaking -- does it work for everybody? ok. i was thinking about this panel a little -- something a little sadistic about this panel but the idea you were going to have a panel of people who have been teaching vietnam for decades and that say 10 minutes, what are they thinking?

zoom through the decades. taught know, and i have -- i have taught about the vietnam war since 1971. and things change. how we teach about the war, how it alters obviously over time. it depends on what the political context is, what institution you are in and also what materials are available. there is a lot of things, how should we say, secret and kept classified. our base of knowledge has altered. i was thinking about this panel, i was thinking i was teaching about vietnam at dartmouth college, and the war was going on. we had very engaged students at that time and we had some returning vets in the community who were very vocal and present

on campus. in then nixon decided spring of 1972 to start bombing that pointining, at it was a very big event on the campus. he was responding to the spring offensive and the fact they fought -- they thought south vietnam would lose. our faculty went into emergency deliberations. when we cancel school forever for a day? the most idiotic comment ever made, one of my colleagues said when the british were being bombed, they felt it was important to keep working. it was like dead silent. voted not to cancel. but a lot of faculty and staff

format we were doing nothing. so we decided that we should in a nearby town. it sounds impressive that we did taxi.ut it was omar's it was really -- it was enough to get us in jail. and we missed our classes and students thought that was great and other students thought we should be fired but that they were paying money to get the wisdom we were depriving them of. but to teach vietnam at that time and that context was really different. it was very real. as a teacher i felt it was my job to create a lot of space for kids who have different opinions. i didn't want to ram things down their throats. real people were out fighting, people dying and making decisions. the whole thing was different. i will not go through every

decade though you would find it fascinating. speaking of teaching it over the years, so at hofstra university, a different demographic. but a lot of the students had teachers -- parents in the war and that was why they came in. maybe mythem said, father will talk to me. my uncle never talks. it we could have communication. the whole experience was framed by the fact people had relatives and some dads came in. present, what is to be done now? i think we don't have a mass movement. it was a very different situation. it was very different because our students now have lived the war the whole lives. it was like that weather. to have them tune into it is a challenge.

teaching about the war in vietnam there are certain things that really are still relevant now, and not forcing it anyway. what are things you can learn? things, they learn that the leaders live. -- lie. a lot of students still believe in what people say. it is like an important thing. how much lying when dawn? second thing you learn is that although the united states government describes what we are doing as a defense of freedom, in the situation it wasn't. it was defense of a dictatorship. least, havingdents at the thought that the u.s.

government might not be supporting freedom and that is something to worry about is a new revelation. fromis where i differ historiography, that it is not just the presidents that make decisions. so much of the discussion is driven by lyndon johnson and richard nixon. these people were not acting alone. they were acting in a constitutional framework they had accepted. tr nixon and kissinger, a big hing for them is the military. the military, in, they do different things. nixon and kissinger are conformists. they learned to hate the joint chiefs of staff. they are not just coming out of their own heads.

there is a whole structure they are dealing with. that is very important. it is important to see the congress and media are contested areas back then. they still are today. they can be a force for good. they can be a force for past 70. they can be a force for not good. there was a lot of fake news about vietnam. most relevant -- to what we are doing here today a there was a peace movement, peace movement within the civilian sector of society, and dissent among the military. everybody knows a little bit, there were some hippie protesters and whatever, but students often have no idea about it.

think this book is important, is to understand this protest ultimately affected policy. that is really an important thing. i am conscious about that for the next period -- nixon period. i agreed with the speaker that said 1967 was also relevant. it is not like, bam, it is 1969 and the peace movement is effective. it has been growing. at the record, you can make reasonable conclusions about what is effective. i know there are some people of my age in the audience. maybe two. [laughter] how many of you at some point or

another went to jail or turn your life upside down and say to somebody, did it do any good? to some extent, we weaken -- we can have answers for that. i endorse what other people were saying, that the antiwar movement was constantly on the mind of nixon and kissinger. it did shape decision-making. i wanted to mention one example, which back then, we paid no attention to, and that is nixon 's decision to start withdrawing troops, which he was doing as of the summer of 1969. he kept doing it. my memory at the time -- every time he announced withdrawal, we

thought it was a trick. it is a trick to take our minds off laos, off cambodia. was very way, but it significant. it was very contested. this is something the military did not want to happen. whatever we thought was clear in hanoi was the united states was leaving the war. it was a question of when. everybody i knew in our antiwar bubble did not appreciate that by the november election in 1972, there are no combat troops left in vietnam. maybe there were some people still shooting, but the combat been removed. who paid any attention to that? a second thing that happened in

1972 is something else not paid much attention to. while mcgovern has this terrible defeat, more antiwar senators got elected in that election. it was clear that when the new congress convened in january 1973, at that point they were going to cut off the money. there was a come to jesus moment when goldwater visits nixon after election day. this is it. come january, there will be no money for this. we do not have the votes, so please tell henry to get it done. nixon referred to his relationship to congress as -- he would say i'm one step ahead of the share. -- of the sheriff. even though congress did not

pass a resolution until after the u.s. troops were gone, congress was a powerful factor. it really was the thing that hung over nixon's head. it made it essential that he keep troops coming out. there are a whole bunch of areas that are different. there is immense tragedy that surrounds vietnam. millions of people died. villages, states, whole provinces decimated. we can't say, wasn't that great? no, it wasn't great. people teach this, when are willing to take some of the amazing risks people in this room talk, it actually can make things better. that is still relevant, even this morning, so thank you. [applause]

linda: michael kazin? michael: thanks for inviting me to take part in this conference. sorry i have not been able to go to anything before this. if i repeat something that was said, excuse me. last night, i was speaking at a panel for the council for foreign relations on populism. most of the people i were speaking to were millionaire donors. i had to defend students today. a couple people said old professors are turning them into socialist. [laughter] it is a little different crowd here today. i want to spend my 10 minutes relating some of what i say to students when i teach the movement against the war. e am done research on -- hav done research on that. works.on other people's

tiny bit of personal background -- the war turned me into a radical in college. my 1967, i couldn't be a democrat anymore. courses on thely 1960's, vietnam, and the global 1960's. a lot of research about the antiwar movement is there was an antiwar movement all around the world. it was an important element in the building of a new left in west germany, in france, in japan, in other parts of the world. --ad grad students that write about that. the war in vietnam is an

international movement. an observation about antiwar movements -- this will be sobering and not so celebratory. likear movements are not collective attempts to change society. in contrast to those who seek to win rights for women or workers or people of color, peace organizers have no natural constituency. neither can the movement grow slowly, taking decades to convince people to at least think differently and enact laws. a massive effort to stop one's country from going to war, or stop a war that is already waging, has to grow quickly. it has to lure activates from other -- activists from other

enduring movements. a lot of people in vietnam had already organized other things, the black freedom movement especially. some people had been organizing against nuclear war. -- saul a linsky used to say we organized organizers. every new war requires peace activists to create a new movement. peacehave always been activists in american history. e,ring periods of peac low-level conflicts most americans don't care about, endure one activists the margins, which is unfortunately true now of the

peace movement as well. the antiwar movement in the vietnam era -- we can debate how much impact it had, how much it was dependent on the vietnamese winning military victories against the united states. there was a complicated relationship there. after the war ended, the movement pretty quickly -- it does not go as high, but it was much less prevalent in american life. most demonstrations were in the spring of 1971 here in washington. 's withdrawal of u.s. ground troops after he signed the peace accords, pows cunningham, that -- pow's coming

home, that had an impact too. because the antiwar movement had been so closely aligned with the large new left, white new left, black new left, asian-american new left as well, it would decline as the new left in general declined. the movements group together and generated enthusiasm -- grew together and generated enthusiasm for one another. as the war wound down, the new left wound down for the same reason and others as well. this might be controversial. i think social movements in u.s. history have only had enduring influence when they become aligned with a major political party. the abolitionists did that with the republican party before and during the civil war.

the right to life movement has done that with the republican party. organized labor did that with the democrats in the new deal. although it is now weaker, it is essential to democratic countries across the country. feminists and lgbt activists found legislative success by winning democrats to their d emands. the antiwar movement did influence democrats who opposed to quit military -- subsequent military interventions abroad. making it very hard for nixon and ford to keep up support for the south vietnamese government after the peace treaty was signed in paris. the movement against the wars in central america in the 1980's was influenced by people like some of us and the generally.

people generally. reagan had to get around the byntrys -- the contras setting up a deal with iran. people thought he was going to leave office anyway, unlike what is happening right now. a congressman from california said, when he helped to pass the amendment, some of us came here to stop vietnam. here is our chance to stop the new one. the movement against the war in vietnam fed into apartheid, into stopping american support for the south african government in the 1980's. it had a long tail, in that sense. wase the war in nicaragua a proxy war, it did not have the

impact of the vietnam war. have?ch more time do i two minutes. final comment. you turn us on, 25 minutes later, you turn us off. [laughter] i thought about this when i spoke of this wonderful anference at notre dame couple years ago, which focused on the g.i. movement against the war. who takey students my courses are progressives of one stripe of the other, but they don't know much about the antiwar movement. they know about the feminist movement, the black freedom movement. everybody knows about earth day and celebrates it in high

school. warmemory of the vietnam does not have that kind of residents. they accept the erroneous notion weremost antiwar activists unpatriotic and spelled america with three k's, although we know that is not true. the g.i. movement comes as a revelation for them. i always show them a clip, which you will see, of veterans throwing metal over the fence in the capital. it is that five-minute clip that elicits a better discussion than anything i told him about the war. the veterans who spoke about the ongoing war in vietnam are essentially invisible, in part because presidential did not defend -- president trump did not defend that intervention in afghanistan. we are expected to say "thank

you for your service." the military continues to be the most respected institution in american society, even if bernie sanders and elizabeth warren is elected president, they would have hard times cutting funds in any way. the audience has a task that is essential and difficult. william james ended his essay on war by reflecting "history is a bath of blood. the only way to change that reality is to convince people through education and organizing inside and out of the political system that it doesn't have to be that way." thanks. [applause] linda: thank you. we turn to peter kuznick. i apologize for our technical difficulties today. peter: i came here thinking the centerpiece of my presentation would be part of the documentary

series i produced. i found out when i got here that i can't show it, so i will try to improvise. i have been teaching about the vietnam war for 53 years. rutgers in thet fall of 1966, i started an anti-vietnam war group. i was a member of sds, but i thought their appeal was too limited, so we started a much bigger antiwar group. 200 people showed up for the first meeting, and it grew from there. i grew up in this shadow of the holocaust. i was not born yet, but many of my relatives were killed in the holocaust. i had a strong sense one had to confront evil wherever one found it. at the age of 12, i joined the naacp. at 13, i joined the congress of

racial equality corps. i went to the vietnam war, -- when the vietnam war became such a prominent force in our lives, i was actively opposed. i saw it as the height of immorality and the worst atrocity since the holocaust, in my mind. i agreed with george mcgovern when he said in 1972 that the nixon bombing policy in indochina is the most barbaric action any country has committed since hitler's efforts to exterminate the jews in the 1930's. i would like to throw in the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki, which i take students on a study abroad class every summer to hiroshima and nagasaki. i have twice taught courses related to the vietnam war itself. centurylasses the 20th

include a lot about vietnam. my most dedicated class i teach regularly is called oliver stone's america. it is a history and film class, where we show most of oliver's major films and relate them to other interpretations of history. a big part of that course is his vietnam films. "platoon" and "heaven and earth," then we get into more policy issues with jfk and nixon. they do a lot of reading of books and compare the interpretations. chris's books. some of the themes i stress when i teach about vietnam, one is a question about who fought the war.

what was the soldier's experience? what i found in teaching vietnam over the years, being here in washington, i had access to incredible guest speakers. on orf them have passed done speaking, so i show videos of them. when i talked about vietnam, i used to bring in -- my favorite panel was with wayne smith, max cleveland, and bobby muller. some of you are singly or with them. -- are familiar with them. wayne smith brought in the black experience. max was at the v8, -- the v.a. the most extraordinary was bobby muller. dynamic,charismatic,

captivating speaker. i still show the clip about this is where he talked about being shot in the chest. bobby was paralyzed from the chest down. he talked about the transformation on the soldiers themselves. he said the guys that went in and murdered 500 people, they w ere us. they were the good guys. they were the little league or -- leaguers. they were the choirboys. they experienced killing, and the process got transformed. i can tell you about my own transformation, from a good guy to a guy that left when -- laughed when kids got wasted. don't think it is some species of human beings. everyone of you can be turned that he would find

inconceivable. -- you would find inconceivable. others come into class. the policyl with aspects. i kept trying to get robert mcnamara to come in. he was always friendly. he would always return my calls. i could not get him in. i invited him to come in with dan ellsberg, which was a mistake. [laughter] however, i got smarter. in highs best friend school, one time we were with their family for cocktails. i tried to get my commitment in -- mcnamara in. he said, tell bob i will come in with him. mcnamara said yes.

the thing i still find the most memorable is he accepts the fact that 3.8 million vietnamese died in the war. 3.8 million. then tried to say that is the equivalent of 27 million americans having died. i have a hard time trying to convey that to my students. one thing my students have all done is visit the memorial. -- t he vietnam memorial. is clearly, the tragedy of vietnam is the 58,280 americans who died. 400vietnam memorial wall is feet long. itit included -- if included the vietnamese and everyone else who died, that

would be eight miles long. that would be a fitting monument to remember the vietnam war. [applause] michael: -- peter: and it would send a very different message, the message i want to convey in my teaching. dan ellsberg used to come in twice the semester when he was living here. i also talked about the navy perspective. chester cooper talked about the cia. we want to give people different contexts. the question i wanted to deal with was whether vietnam was an aberration. so many think it was a noble cause that went awry. let me explain that differently. in 2007, i was having dinner with oliver stone. he said, peter, let's do a

documentary. we will make a one hour documentary about hiroshima and the cold war. i got to see oliver two weeks later in new york. hour, an idea for a 10 multipart documentary. we had 12 episodes. it took us five years to do it. we wrote a book with it, "the untold history of the united states," based on the documentary narratives, graphic novels coming up. is aat, we agreed -- it real challenge. oliver stone, a preeminent filmmaker about vietnam. challenge in a lot of ways. not that they disagreed, but our

experiences were so different. oliver grew up in a right-wing cold war family in new york. at yale, he dropped out of yale to volunteer for combat in vietnam. he supported goldwater in 1964 and while volunteering for combat, he was wounded twice, highly decorated. one minute? okay. [laughter] peter: so how are we going to do this? we try to contextualize it. we do three earlier episodes, the cold war in the 1950's and 1960's. we want to contextualize it. we talk about the overthrow of brazil's government in 1964, then show the u.s. invasion into the dominican republic in 1965, then we show in greece the

support for the coup and military takeover in 1967. then we go to asia and show the bloodbath indonesia. then we talk about vietnam, then we talk about chile. we make clear vietnam is not an aberration, not a lost cause, but the kind of atrocity that it really was. make that --ints i one of the things i find so disturbing is according to a think thel in 2018 -- vietnam war was worth fighting. our project is the history of the american empire. we try to end it with these

broad lessons. we talk about american foreign policy. we trace it back to statements made by john adams. we talk about george kennedy's 1948 memo where he says the u.s. has 6.3% of the worlds population, but we control 50% of the world's wealth. the challenge in this upcoming period is how do you maintain that discrepancy, that disjunction? he said you do that by hard power concepts. he says we are not the raping hoards who conquered the world, now the people doing this are educated wall street bankers. we talked about this being the first world against the third world. because could show it, the end of this is very powerful.

these are some of the main lessons about the effect of the antiwar movement, about the government lying us into wars, and the broader context of the history of the american empire is what we are trying to show. [applause] you for these powerful presentation about how you deal with teaching the war. oliverto mention that stone will be one of the judges of the essay contest with a $500 prize that is available to students about their reflection of any aspect of this week, of waging peace. we had a question last night from one of the students. i would like to first through

the question out -- throw the question out to any students in the audience about what they want to hear from their professors. what are the scenes -- the them es they would like to see addressed in their courses that relate to what you have seen so far in waging peace week? would anyone care to venture an opinion? >> back here. >> hi. i am a sophomore here. i think i would ask how parallels can be drawn between the peace movement in the vietnam war and the student protests that have started to become a big movement now regarding gun control, and how students can use that to relate to the peace movement in vietnam, tactics that could be

used from the peace protest that can be used now. linda: is there another question? >> [indiscernible] i will wait for a mic. i got a mic. i would like for courses to be taught about the vietnam war almost entirely from the perspective of the vietnamese, starting from ancient unity's history and -- ancient vietnamese history and progressing to the present. i think there is a strong emphasis on the american perspective, but i think there is a lot that can be learned by focusing exclusively on the vietnamese context and their perceptions of the war, past and present. linda: yes?

just stopped being a student in august. i graduated. i am now teaching a vietnam war class. my struggle turns out to be that i constantly -- i was very conscious about me being vietnamese teaching about the war in the united states. i kept thinking, i am being biased? am i objective enough? am i neutral enough? to hear that we want just vietnamese perspective is refreshing, thank you. but it is not going to happen. [laughter] i cannot connect them, my students, with the american perspective. they will not be very

interested. as peter kuznick pointed out, it is a long trajectory of the united states getting involved in many things in the world, and why they did what they did, and how it benefited or not benefited the americans. then i can sprinkle some of the vietnamese perspectives. i know it is a delicate matter and it is not easy to balance. i had to read the students to see how perceptive they are. to me, that is my struggle. i am teaching again next semester, and i hope i can refine my skills, control my emotions better. i have to put out right away a disclaimer -- at the beginning of the class, i said emotions are normal human things. i am going to show you pictures

and videos that will make you uncomfortable, but it is ok to feel uncomfortable. it is ok to feel that this is wrong. it is ok to feel that this is right. all i want is for you to relate and think about all this and how you can make a difference. ,o the point of the panel talking about the effectiveness of the antiwar movement -- let me start. theissertation is about antiwar, but from the vietnamese perspective. that is one of the major revisions the book publisher toted me to do, that is assess the effectiveness of the antiwar movement. i don't know if i could do that. i don't know if there is a way

to measure that. today, sitting here, something just occurred to me. how about changing the framework of this question? let's not ask whether the antiwar movement was effective or not. let's say we didn't even have the antiwar movement. let's talk about 3.8 million people who died. laotians, cambodians, south koreans, australians, thai -- all that cost is with the antiwar movement. not in the states, but global. let's talk about it without the antiwar movement. what would it have been? let's talk about it. then we can talk about whether it had any long-lasting legacy. my question is, can we afford

not to do it? that is it. thank you. [applause] with thoses start three questions and comments. there ist me just say a terrific dissertation about vietnamese people's diplomacy. it will make a terrific book. i enjoy having them come into class to give the vietnamese people's perspective on the war as well. gavin is raining a dissertation -- writing a dissertation now on missionaries in vietnam. american missionaries who served. i think i will hand it off to michael to answer the first question, because he has done a

lot of thinking about the relation to movements. michael: i wish we had more time. use fiction. we read "the quiet american" again. it is not from vietnamese perspective. to a certain extent, it is. the one vietnamese woman there is seen through the perspective of a powerful white man. but you can see this terrible thing is going to happen, and it is doomed to failure, but it will still happen. about relevance to the present -- one of the things about social movements generally and this movement as well is the repertoire of the things students do now is dependent upon what happened in the 1960's. not just the antiwar movement, but the black freedom movement,

civil disobedience, street demonstrations, working for candidates who support your politics and your demands, inside-outside strategies. that is exactly what happened with the vietnam war, with the freedom movement. maybe it is arrogant to say so, arestudents active today the grandchildren of all of us. in some ways, i think students today are actually smarter than we were in a lot of ways. you are not talking about tearing apart the whole country, which is unrealistic. strategic,much more students are, than we were. we were so angry and morally righteous that we made a lot of mistakes. i think students today make

fewer of those mistakes. keep doing what you are doing. always think strategically. what is the impact of a particular tactic, certainly which? -- certain language? how will you bridge divisions that are always going to be there? we are a divided country in lots of ways. georgetown and others are more liberal, progressive in general. still, they can be very cynical about the past, about what they can do. small victories are important. people have to see that what they do can win . on my campus, the graduate student voted by 83% to form a union last year. that generated support for other

things as well. [applause] we have graduate students politicized in a way they are not before. lessons isome of the learned from being involved in the movement 50 years ago. one can learn more generally from the successful social movements throughout history. i want to respond to one of the issues, because i have this list of things about vietnam that i think are useful for students to learn about. this might seem crazy to the older people sitting in the audience, but i skip on my list the piece of it, which was what did american policy mean for andle in vietnam, laos,

cambodia? that is not particularly well conveyed by giving numbers of dead people. it is a challenge. i am getting more literature now can draw on. we but make it real to students when richard nixon says, let's be brutal, i want planes flying morning to night. i want people in this audience of the horrors that were happening. we had literature that was not mainstream, but in different publications that we were reading about. what motivated us to do things

was the sense of horrible pain being inflicted upon people. it is a challenge with students, just in terms of the existing literature, which is policy focused and does not have this other piece in it. it makes kids very bored. it is important to do this, not to just be true to the record, but also because we are living through it now. how many people right now have any appreciation for what was done to iraq? of this impeachment proceeding, that ukraine did not get more military aid from us, and on an ongoing basis, the daily consequences of us having intervened there. this is going on. it is just totally

marginalized. it is always a challenge, how to make it real about what is happening to people on the ground. i think it is vitally important in terms of opening students to the awareness of situations they need -- of other situations they need to pay attention to. peter: to build on a couple of my students i have read fiction to talk about the war from a vietnamese perspective. i got to twice brings students to vietnam for alternative spring breaks. on the question of students and connecting to movements now, i agree with michael, our students

are very liberal, progressive. they are all somewhat on the left, but they are not very concerned with foreign-policy issues. that, to me, is very troubling. especially at a time when our country is bombing seven other countries, where we have more than 800 overseas bases, when the richest eight people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 8 billion. when he was special forces were -- u.s. special forces were operating in 45 countries last year, they are not focused on these kinds of questions. one thing teaching vietnam allows us to do is engage them, but to convey the sense of outrage we felt growing up when we were there ain't -- we were their age. we felt a moral obligation.

sensefort to convey that to the students is a big part for us about teaching vietnam. michael: quick comment on that. i disagree a little bit with my colleagues on both sides about how to teach that. i was part ofents the antiwar movement. i talk about the horrors of the war. i think it is also important to not proselytize in the classes and make sure students come to realizations on their own. i have people who still support the work retrospectively, like bill kristol, for example. obviously i want them to come

out on my site, but i think it is important they feel like they are not being pushed to think a certain thing about the war. i am not accusing you guys of that. there is a certain way people on the right attack university professors for proselytizing their students. i make clear what i think, but i also make clear they will read all sides. the book about different voices is an important book to do that, as well as people who come to cl ass who still retroactively think it was a mistake and we could have done it better. peter: would you say the same thing about teaching the holocaust? michael: i would have pieces why they didying it, yeah.

[indiscernible] >> go to a ballgame and see when they bring up the color guard and everyone puts their hands over their chests. can you hear me? okay. when i was singing is -- saying is students are involved. they are coming out for climate change, for gun control. i don't think the students are not willing to come out, they are coming out for the issues they think are terribly important to them. we are living in an era now -- it has always been an empire, but it is so militaristic. go to a ballgame and see people

put their hands over their chest. how do you deal with students -- even if they are to the left -- how do you deal with the massive prevailing militarism when you teach antiwar stuff? linda: can i ask the young woman over there? please. mic that way, >> hi. i am a freshman here, actually. whyink part of the reason students are coming out for gun violence and for climate change is it is something we are getting that visceral, emotional reaction for. part of the learning and the timesng of war is often trying to be objective and

trying not to be seen as indoctrinating or pushing your views on the students. i think sometimes that is a drawback, because we are presented this information in such a dry, objective way, it doesn't get much of a visceral response. linda: we have time for one more question. i have not heard from the gentleman right there. >> we live -- in washington dc, there are monuments to so-called war heroes. i can't think of many monuments to people like hugh thompson, whose film i saw last night. what is unique about him is he was using moral values to look

at war. i think that perspective is movement. the antiwar i think that is the kind of teaching which we need to do in a conference like this, support a permanent exhibit with monuments just like the vietnam memorial. wsry popular, but it dra people who are for the war and against the war. we need people who start thinking morally, and see that as a legitimate perspective. that is how i think we are going to eventually start questioning the empire. you.: thank

athink we will need to give couple of seconds to each of our respond, because we have to end right now, in fact. final words? a motto for the rest of us? michael: go organize. peter: what can i say? one of the things that is important to convey to the students is not some heavy moral message about it, but to show what people like them were doing. we were their age. i was showing a class the other night a clip from berkeley in the 1960's. the people doing these things were just like them. it leads to the sense that they

too can change the world. we are up against militarism. the other point i would like to make about teaching is we are all very careful, i'm sure, to try to not make the conservative kids who disagree with us feel like they are being outed in s ome way. we are trying to dialogue them. -- with them. university, i the have to run interference with my conservative students. i have to protect them from the group thinking going on. we want them to engage. we might want them to change, but even if they don't, we care about them as much as we do our other students. it is a balance. we all have different sides to these things. we want the students to

understand the different arguments, because we want to relate it to things in their own lives. linda: final words? carolyn: such a texas character. [laughter] i think all this discussion is an important one. as i get older, i no longer believe i can tell young people how to organize and what they should do. i feel they are not standing on my shoulders. this is relevant to other teaching as well as vietnam -- when you are creating a teaching atmosphere, just letting them know what happened and having them read books that challenge them to think, then you get a lot of positive response. what they are going to do about it, what it means to their organizing, not clear.

for those of us who do this kind of teaching, you can see students are very quick to appreciate, very quick to try to think about the relevance of what they have learned. in that way, there is no reason to be so pessimistic. michael: teaching his a moral -- is a moral enterprise. even if we don't say so, when we teach about this or anything else important in history, studentsy wars, when hear us, they are thinking about what kind of life one should l ead. it is a heavy responsibility, i think. they don't know much about history, but they have a sense of what is right and wrong in human affairs. we can help them think about that. linda: thank you very much. please join me in thanking the

panel. >> this is american history tv, covering history c-span style with lecturers and discussions with authors, historians, and teachers. 48 hours, all weekend, every weekend, only on c-span3. >> this weekend on lectures in history, a university of nebraska professor teaches a class about some of the lawsuits brought by slaves who sued for their freedom in the antebellum period. he emphasizes how most suits affected not just one person, but entire families. here is a preview. >> mary and most of the children were taken to baltimore for sale to be sold. this is the scene you just saw in the short film, right?

they were taken from the b&o railroad station in washington dc to baltimore. daniel is desperately trying to stop the and possibly sale of mary and the children. at that moment, daniel on the depot platform is bludgeoned by the train conductors. the train pulls away. and abolitionists saw this helped daniel intervene. what happens to mary bell and eventually, with ,elp from some abolitionists daniel bell is able to raise $400. he ableis -- is able to

freedom,marybelle's but he only has enough money to purchase two of the children. and mary bell have to decide which two children will be saved and kept, and which three or four children will be gone and sold. they do that. after the civil war, some of the children are able to reunite with mary and daniel bell. we don't know what happened to them. we don't know. but they are sold and taken away at age eight, nine, 10. hey bell, daniel, just like purchased his own freedom, now

has to purchase mary's freedom. this is what happens to mary bell. >> learn more about how slaves suied for their freedom in the antebellum period on lectures in history. join the classroom here on american history tv. this is american history tv, exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span3. next, on our weekly series, the civil war, a civil war scholar talks about operations in the shenandoah valley during august 1864. following a confederate events on washington dc, union and confederate forces engaged in skirmishes throughout the valley. eastern, 5:00 p.m. pacific, we visit the university of nebraska lincoln classroom to hear about lawsuits brought by slaves who sued for their

freedom in the antebellum period . highlighting the 10th armored division known as the armored division involved in the 1944 battle of the bulge. that >> onto our last talk for the evening. student of military history, scott is a graduate of the james madison university in the shenandoah valley at harrisonburg. he is not a stranger to this conference. as i can well remember introducing him as an up-and-coming young historian in 20 was on our history panel lummis study the 1864 valley campaign that year.