A panel discussion including former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, special counsel to JFK Theodore Sorensen, and special assistant to LBJ Jack Valenti looks at presidential policies during the Vietnam War. This discussion follows the discussion "Vietnam and the Presidency: Inside the White House I."
34th president Jimmy Carter (through a taped interview) discusses his experiences with the aftermath of the Vietnam War during his presidency. A panel discussion including former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, special counsel to JFK Theodore Sorensen, and special assistant to LBJ Jack Valenti on presidential policies at the time follows. Daughter of JFK and JFK Library Foundation president Caroline Kennedy introduces the event.
A panel including newsanchors Brian Williams and Dan Rather, former correspondent Steve Bell, and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Frances Fitzgerald discusses media coverage of the Vietnam War and public opinion on the war, both during the war and today.
A panel including former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, Senator Chuck Hagel, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, NBC newsanchor Brian Williams, and former ambassador to Vietnam and POW Pete Peterson examines perception of the Vietnam War today and what effects the war and perceptions of it have had on the U.S. and continue to have.
Audio and video options are available.
A series of professors and historians look at the presidential tape recordings of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson, focusing on what these tapes reveal about the presidents' decisions and roles during the Vietnam War. The panel also discusses the significance of such recordings in general—to memory, to the press, to historians—and what they reveal about the character of individual presidents.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Halberstam delivers the keynote address to the national conference "'Vietnam and the Presidency," describing his experiences as a reporter during and on the Vietnam War and speaking on the war and its effects from this perspective.
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Christian Appy, associate professor of history at MIT, discusses perceptions and memories of the Vietnam War from all possible sides: American civilians, antiwar protestors, and soldiers, as well as Vietnamese civilians and soldiers.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch discusses the final years of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, focusing on King's attempts to move the Civil Rights Movement into protest of the Vietnam War and King's calls for broader social and economic justice.
Video and audio options are available.
Professor and author Simon Schama discusses the escape of many slaves to join the British during the Revolutionary War, in response to offers of freedom for service to Britain. He continues on to look at what happened to these men and women after Britain's defeat.
Professor Priscilla McMillan examines the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist and director of the Manhattan Project. McMillan focuses particularly on his post-World-War-II opposition to development of the hydrogen bomb, the 1954 trial in which his security clearance was revoked, and the context of these events at the beginning of the USSR-U.S. arms race.