Vietnam War 
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8/1/2021
The Media's Failure on Agent Orange
by Ron Steinman
The media seldom covers the ongoing harm caused by Agent Orange because little of the story is "news." This is a failure of duty to inform the public about the callous use of the defoliant that may allow similar wartime ecological catastrophes in the future.
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7/4/2021
The National Bicentennial Erased Antiwar Activism by Vietnam Veterans
by Elise Lemire
The United States Semiquincentennial Commission is preparing for July 4, 2026 as an opportunity for educating the public about the nation's history. It should avoid repeating the whitewash of recent history in the 1976 Bicentennial celebration.
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SOURCE: KPBS
6/28/2021
Independent Lens Presents: The People Vs. Agent Orange
Two women activists demand accountability from the chemical industry for the toll of illness and death caused by Agent Orange.
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6/20/2021
50 Years Later, the Pentagon Papers Remain an Historic Landmark for Freedom of the Press
by Jared Schroeder
While democratic norms have, at times, seemed paper thin in recent years, the Court’s terse decision in the Pentagon Papers decision persists as a bulwark against government efforts to halt publication.
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SOURCE: New York Times
6/9/2021
"We're Going to Publish": The New York Times' Oral History of the Pentagon Papers
From RAND Corporation leaker Daniel Ellsberg to first amendement litigator Floyd Abrams, the key players in the 1971 publication of the Pentagon papers reflect on their work 50 years later.
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SOURCE: New York Times
6/11/2021
Secrets That Were No Secret, Lessons That Were Not Learned
by Andrew Bacevich
The Pentagon Papers are a document of the hubris and ignorance of American military leaders in the Vietnam era, but Andrew Bacevich warns that the idea that global problems are amenable to being solved by American arms remains dangerously popular.
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6/13/2021
The Night Vietnam Veterans Stormed Bunker Hill
by Elise Lemire
The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 was a military defeat for the Continental Army but a coup for morale. In 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War won a nonviolent battle at the site for the allegiance of the working class residents of Charlestown.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/28/2021
Vietnam Veterans Transformed Memorial Day Weekend into a Holiday about Peace
by Elise Lemire
"By the time the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 1971, many returning service members decided to reject not only the commercialization of Memorial Day, but also the holiday’s traditional premise that it was noble to die fighting a war."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
5/21/2021
The White Men Who Wanted to Be Victims: Joe Darda's "How White Men Won the Culture Wars"
by Chris Lehmann
Joe Darda argues that the convergence of three cultural trends – the turn of the Vietnam veterans' movement away from antiwar politics and toward treating trauma, white ethnic identity politics, and the backlash to civil rights and feminism – birthed a potent strain of white male grievance politics in the 1970s that endures today.
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SOURCE: Ellsberg Archive Project
4/28/2021
Truth, Dissent & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg: Free, Open Online Conference April 30-May 1
A free online conference brings together more than two dozen distinguished historians, journalists, activists, whistleblowers, and former policymakers on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg himself will present the keynote.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/19/2021
The Girl in the Kent State Photo
by Patricia McCormick
Mary Ann Vecchio's life was forever changed by being pictured in the famous photograph with Kent State shooting victim Jeffrey Miller; she became a lightning rod for a nation's anger at age 14.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/13/2021
Biden Can Redeem His Mistake
by George Packer
Writer George Packer argues that withdrawing from Afghanistan repeats a mistake of the Vietnam era: abandoning groups who took the grave risk of allying with the United States.
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4/18/2021
The Real Patriots Invaded the Nation’s Capital Fifty Years Ago
by Elise Lemire
On this Patriots’ Day, fifty years after a battalion of Vietnam veterans brought their anguish and their outrage to the Capitol Building, we are reminded of the idealistic threads connecting the militiamen of Lexington and Concord and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/10/2021
Marshall D. Sahlins, Groundbreaking Anthropologist, Dies at 90
Marshal Sahlins was an innovator in the practice of campus "teach-ins," developed as a way for he and colleagues to protest the war in Vietnam without disengaging from contact with their students.
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SOURCE: Responsible Statecraft
3/30/2021
Will Afghanistan make Biden's Presidency Turn Out like Truman's or LBJ's?
by Joe Cirincione
"Joe Biden can be a great president. But not if he is so afraid of attacks from the right that he repeats LBJ’s blunder and stumbles into a war we cannot win and never need fight."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
2/11/2021
Beyond Donald Trump: When Poisons Curdle
by Andrew Bacevich
The writer regrets not absorbing the message of MLK's prophetic "Beyond Vietnam" sermon when it was delivered in 1967. But the years since have shown he wasn't alone, and the nation's failure to reflect on the interconnection of racism, materialism and militarism accounts for the dire state of affairs reflected in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/3/2021
Rennie Davis, ‘Chicago Seven’ Antiwar Activist, Dies at 80
Mr. Davis was most famous as an organizer of the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago which led to his trial for conspiracy and inciting riot.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/16/2021
Alan Canfora, Who Carried Wounds From Kent State, Dies at 71
After being wounded by National Guard fire at Kent State, Canfora worked tirelessly to ensure that the violence would not be erased from the university's or the nation's history.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/7/2021
Now It Can Be Told: How Neil Sheehan Got the Pentagon Papers
Award-winning journalist Neil Sheehan told an interviewer the story of how he got the Pentagon Papers, on the condition that the story could not be published while he was alive. His passing this week opens up new knowledge in the history of press freedom and the Vietnam war.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/7/2021
Neil Sheehan, Reporter Who Obtained the Pentagon Papers, Dies at 84
Neil Sheehan's earned skepticism of the rightness of the American mission in Vietnam made him the reporter to whom Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his volume "A Bright Shining Lie" about the war.