Fulbright University Vietnam
From: Ben Quick <bnquick74@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 4:51 PM
To: Thi Bay Miradoli <thibay.miradoli@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fulbright University Vietnam
Thanks for letting me know, Thi! It’s an interesting situation. The tuition at the university—I think it’s similar to Fulbright and RMIT—is so high that we get mostly students from wealthy families. And quite often they are only with us because of visa issues or something like that. Once they get sorted, they’re off to the US. We try to give them a traditional American liberal arts education, but we are always aware that MOET is lurking somewhere in the background. Because I write and teach journalism, it’s especially tricky for me. I actually run stories by a couple of group members before publication. The feedback is usually something like “as an American the worst that will happen is you might be called in to a meeting with the government liaison and told to tone it down. But no Vietnamese can write that.” That’s a problem when trying to teach students how to get to the heart of a story through interviews and investigations.
Anyway, thanks again for letting me know, Thi. I hope you’re well.
Ben
From: Ben Quick <bnquick74@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 4:30 PM
To: Thi Bay Miradoli <thibay.miradoli@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fulbright University Vietnam
On Wed, 19 Jul 2023 at 12:01 Ben Quick <bnquick74@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello colleagues,
I’m very late to the discussion, but as a westerner who’s been teaching Vietnamese college students in Vietnam for nearly seven years, I think what Thi writes here is the ideal:
“I say, provide Vietnamese students with the same access to knowledge and education about the west that the west has about Vietnam and let them judge what is in their interest or neo-colonialist propaganda.”
But the reality is MOET does not allow the same access to knowledge and education, particularly in the areas of history and critical thinking skills. This is one area where the government is kicking itself in the foot. And it’s real. It’s especially problematic at public schools, although even international universities have to comply with MOET’s standards and have a government liaison on staff.
Something to keep in mind when working with students here.
Best,
Ben, AUV
On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 at 19:49 Thi Bay Miradoli <thibay.miradoli@gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry, sent too fast, the question itself is commendable. It's great that it was asked and that there could be a constructive discussion about it.
If it were me, I would take the teaching assignment and then ask the questions to the students and/or ask them what they think would benefit them most.
And then maybe also teach 1 day a week at a local/public university to students who are not wealthy or lucky enough to attend a private, foreign university!
Regards
Thi Bay Miradoli
Unaffiliated
I am a little late to this thread. I taught at Can Tho University, both social science to university students and English/Cultural studies to technical experts and lecturers, recipient of the Mekong 1000 scholarship. I also taught some workshops for project management students at the Asian Institute of Technology.
My two cents: Westerners study Vietnamese history, language and culture.
Furthermore, I am also a corporate cross-cultural trainer hired by Fortune 500 companies to train their leadership ahead of international relocations, including to/from Vietnam.
Many people on this listserv haved studied, researched Vietnamese history, language, culture etc and are now experts in the field. Depriving Vietnamese of the same opportunity would also be neo-colonialist and, I might add, opportunistic. Imagine being a western "Vietnam expert" who needs to "protect" the Vietnamese from acquiring "westernized knowledge".
I say, provide Vietnamese students with the same access to knowledge and education about the west that the west has about Vietnam and let them judge what is in their interest or neo-colonialist propaganda.
I asked my students similar questions all the time. What I learned from their answers far exceeded what I could have ever taught them.
Regards
Thi Bay Miradoli
Unaffiliated, New Jersey
yes, these were the people who protested openly and got deported. Meanwhile, Phan van Hum and Ho Huu Tuong went to Belgium to lie low for a while.
By the way, I remembered wrong about Ung van Khiem. He did not go to France. Thanks to Charles Keith for coorrectin my bit of misinformation.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
Ta Thu Thau was also one of the key organisers of the protest in front of Elysee Palace in 1930. And Nguyen Van Tao, Tran Van Giau of the commnunist group were involved. Both the Troskists and communists combined their efforts.
19 of them were deported after the protests. Below is an extract from the report from Phu Nu Tan Van (3/7/1930) on the 19 persons
“..
Có 19 vị học-sanh Việt-nam ở Pháp, bị trục về nước, đã đi tàu Athos II tới Saigon chiều hôm 24 Juin. Ai cũng nhớ rằng nội trong tháng Mai, học-sanh ta bên Pháp hành-động về chánh-trị dữ lắm: một là cuộc biểu-tình ở trước dinh quan Tổng-thống nước Pháp, là điện Élysée, phản kháng về sự Hội-đồng Đề-hình làm án các nhà cách-mạng ở Yênbay: hai là dự đám biểu tình của đảng cọng-sản ở một chổ trong thành Paris, kêu là Mur des Fédérés. Nhơn đó mà có nhiều anh em học-sanh bị bắt-giam mấy ngày, rồi lính dẩn xuống Marseille đuổi xuống tàu Athos II về nước. Những người bị đuổi như sau nầy: Huỳnh-văn-Phương, Tạ-thu-Thâu, Trần-văn-Chiêu, Trần-văn-Ty, Đào-tấn-Phát, Trần-văn-Đởm, Lê-văn-Thử, Trần-văn-Giàu, Nguyễn-văn-Tạo, Susini; 10 vị nầy bị bắt về đám biểu tình trước điện Élysée. Có ba vị nầy lại bị bắt ở nhà, sau cuộc biểu tình, là: Ngô-quang-Huy, Phạm-văn-Chánh và Lê-bá-Cang. Còn 7 vi, sau nầy thì bị bắt về đám biểu-tình ở Mur des Fédérés của đảng cọng-sản: Hồ-văn-Ngà, Vũ-Liên, Trịnh-văn-Phú, Nguyễn-văn-Tân, Trần-duy-Đàm, Vũ-đình-Kiên, và Nguyễn-trọng-Đắc. Cả thảy là 20 người, nhưng khi lính dẩn-xuống Marseille, thì có một người là Nguyễn-trọng-Đắc lại được trở về Paris học, còn 19 người phải xuống tàu về nước
“
In the above list, we can find the Troskists: Ho Van Nga, Trinh Van Phu, Ta Thu Thau, Huynh Van Phuong, Pham Van Chanh.. and the some prominent communists: Tran Van Giau, Nguyen Van Tao
Ironically, most of the Troskists above were later murdered by the communists in 1945 in the aftermath of the August Revolution. All was forgotten 1945 of their time together in France in 1930.
Hiep
Dear Pierre et al,
I would like to share my $.02 for the paragraph "I actually thought they were Viet kieu, their English being so good and their perspective on Vietnamese history being so different from the norm. I felt pretty good about myself when I was done with my talk, thinking I had contributed to their development as Vietnamese pupils capable of meeting Western academic standards."
I recently spent several weeks traveling from North to South Vietnam, meeting and talking with people from different walks of life, a majority of them under 30. I came away with a similar impression.
Their English skill seems to be a rebirth of a trend seen more than 100 years ago. Bùi Quang Chiêu, Phan Văn Trường, Nguyễn Mạnh Tường, Trần Đức Thảo, and many others excelled in French school in the early 20th century. As a medical doctor and volunteer, my grandfather completed his research at a Marseille military hospital prior to the end of WWI. My parents, aunts and uncles were fluent in French and some in both French and English. When visiting my 95-year-old aunt in Hue, I was able to convince her to sing one of her favorite songs, "One Day When We Were Young", in French. Since she joined the Viet Minh long before I was born, I met her for the first time in Saigon after 1975. In other words, when given a chance, the Vietnamese are eager to learn new things, gain new knowledge, explore new horizons. Therefore, it would not be a surprise that they embrace neither Chinese nor Russian, but French then and English now, the language of free spirit.
On their perspective on Vietnamese history, according to the state media, high school students consistently score low on history test. As stated in the article below, among other things, they refuse to be bounded by any norm.
"Trong kỳ thi tốt nghiệp THPT 2021, 226 thí sinh đạt điểm 10 môn Lịch sử và 331.429 em điểm dưới trung bình."
https://vtc.vn/mon-lich-su-doi-so-hon-50-thi-sinh-dat-diem-duoi-trung-binh-ar626748.html
"Xin hãy thôi biến lịch sử thành một cuốn sách ca ngợi công trạng và công đức: ta thắng địch thua, ta giỏi địch kém ta chỉ có đúng và không bao giờ có sai lầm…
Không khách quan chính là chỗ này đây. Mà không khách quan có nghĩa là áp đặt. Ở đời chẳng ai muốn mình bị áp đặt, nhất là áp đặt về tư duy.
Con người cần biết sự thật. Cho dù sự thật đó cay đắng, tràn đầy nước mắt thì nó vẫn hơn là một bài ngợi ca nhưng không đúng sự thật. Có lịch sử nào chỉ có chiến thắng, có lịch sử nào mà chỉ có vinh quang, có lịch sử nào không chứa những sai lầm?"
https://dantri.com.vn/blog/tham-hoa-dot-lich-su-dau-chi-rieng-hoc-sinh-1437517702.htm
Where do Vietnamese students pick up their history skill then?
To stay current in my area of interest, I keep in touch with friends and often visit individually selected social media and state media sites in Vietnam. With roughly 75% of the population using internet, Vietnam is a country with multiple sources of learning for its people.
In the past 10+ years, I have witnessed an evolution on Vietnam's social media and state media. There are more informative and interesting discussions about Vietnamese history and current events on social media and more worthy articles on state media today than 20 years ago. Students who are interested in learning history can do so by being self-taught and by staying connected. In rare occasions, there are even rebuttals from the authorities on rather sensitive issues raised on social media. For the state to conduct some form of dialogue with its citizens is a step in the right direction.
While people in the West may not be aware of this change, it is there and it helps to raise "dân trí". In Phan Châu Trinh's thoughts, "khai dân trí" is a critical element for the country's bright future.
And of course students can take university courses. However, a friend of mine who teaches history told me that students were rarely allowed to speak freely in class.
In short, by encouraging your students, inside and outside of the school environment, to sharpen their critical thinking skills, many knowledge-hungry souls will certainly benefit from your time in Vietnam and they will be able to optimize their contributions to their country.
Cheers,
Calvin Thai
Independent
Then let’s not fall for their rhetoric or semantics either. “Woke”, originating in Black culture decades ago, remains a good term for awarness of social reality and willingness to act to change it for the better, especially around issues of institutional racism and white supremacy.
Just my 2 cents.
Joe Berry
I'd like to hear more from Yen Vu about her experience teaching at FUV. What do students learn or hope to learn that they might not learn at VNU? And why do they think so?
FUV is expensive, especially compared with public universities in Vietnam. But a Western education is highly prized. in 2018, Vietnam ranked sixth in the number of students attending American colleges and universities, with 23,000 plus. This is not counting students who go to Australia or Europe.
By the way, the reverse of neo-colonialism is cultural appropriation. Without giving in to Ron de Santis and the MAGA crowd, let us not be "woke".
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
Pierre –
I very much appreciate your and Yen Vue’s insightful, helpful, and challenging thoughts about your experience at Fulbright University in Viet Nam. As I read through it, my 50-year professional career (1967-2007), focused primarily on providing so-called residential “technical assistance” in Viet Nam and many other countries, figuratively flashed before my eyes. My introspective reflections over those many years in foreign “aid” places me somewhere between your concerns and Yen Vue’s thoughtful response.
There is no doubt that the purpose and delivery of such aid by the provider is defined ethnocentrically. It was clear to me while serving as a USAID-financed “Advisor” at the National Institute of Administration in Sai-gon (1972-1974) that what we were expected to “teach” the advanced students there were approaches to “modern” public administration separate from any understanding of Vietnamese administrative systems from pre-colonial, through colonial, to contemporary periods and completely divorced from the actual situations of the people they were expected to “administer.” Another example of a different kind is provided by the Head of the Central Java Provincial Planning Unit in Semarang, Indonesia. At some point in my three-year stint as Team Leader of a USAID-financed project implementation team (1978-1980), he responded to one of my many questions by saying that many Indonesians working in the provincial government viewed our presence as a tax on the grant funds received—this from an Indonesian 15 years my senior holding an MPA from Indiana University. Many other insights about your concerns were provided by local professional “counterparts” working on similar projects re. decentralized planning and transfer of financial resources from central governments to subordinate levels in Asia and Africa. A few additional cases specific to Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malaysia, Sudan, and South Africa (during the transition years) also stand out in my memory as particularly helpful. However, I will not bore y’all in this already too-long Email with further descriptions of those cases nor how we adjusted our approaches in attempts to reduce such frictions. So I will cut to the chase.
My reading of your many publications and recent direct discussions with you convince me (for what it’s worth) that you are not an instrument of neo-colonialism (however, my own history might be judged). As for the broader concerns you raise about the entire international educational exchange system, I think that is appropriate fodder for a publication or even a book directed toward professional academics and policymakers engaged in such exchanges. But don’t let that issue, well beyond your ability to change in the next 18 months or so, deprive the students at Fulbright University Viet Nam of your contribution to their education at the individual level. Believe in and respect them with the confidence that, as they mature and go out into the world of Vietnam or internationally, they will build on their university education and, as we all do in our own way, continue to learn and adjust to the realities of the environment within which they live and work whatever and wherever that might be.
What follows might be presumptuous of me toward someone of your well-earned stature in academia. Still, since you asked, here are a few lessons I learned from making almost every mistake imaginable in cross-cultural and operational contexts during my many decades “providing TA.” If not useful to you, it can always be ignored with no loss to either of us and, in any event, might be helpful to others that read this.
The primary lessons I learned from my foreign experiences are: (1) remember you are the outsider—you are the “other”—not them, (2) do NOT approach those to whom you have been assigned as a supply-driven “advisor,” (3) approach your assignment as a LEARNER rather than an “Expert” bringing the “truth” to people who in most ways better understand what is technically possible--or with which they are more comfortable—within the environment in which they operate, (4) be demand-driven by providing advice in response to questions or requests they bring to you, and (5) offer any advice in a conversational manner, using probing questions in return, (6) never give advice by EMail or Text Message (no contradiction here since I am in no respect your "Advisor"), and so on. Finally, in the role of “professing” in a foreign classroom, do what I assume you do at San Diego State—probe your students’ understanding of whatever material you present and encourage them to question or express their own points of view in response. Just be direct, respectful, and friendly; they will take YOU for who YOU are, which in your case is a good thing!
My 2 cents and very best regards for raising this issue for all of us.
Jerry Mark Silverman, Ph.D.
World Bank Principal Institutional Development Specialist & Regional Manager of its Water & Sanitation Group for East Asia (retired as staff Dec. 1999)
Independent Researcher since 2007
Savannah, GA
P.S. - to all VSG colleagues, I would be pleased to send short vignettes about those experiences referenced above, including my responses to them at the time, to anyone requesting one or more of them—especially those lessons learned in VN—by Emailing me directly at jmsilverman5@comcast.net
Thanks, Prof. Asselin for sharing your insights. Please allow me to share my experience with you. I was recently invited to give a seminar at Fulbright University Saigon via Zoom in English. I was impressed with the students, not so much by their English as by their real-life experience in the subject concerned, community development. Studying at Fulbright is not cheap and these students must have come from well-off families unless they received Fulbright grants or scholarships.
I have also funded a four-year program at Hue University’s history department that awarded four modest prizes per year for the best papers on Vietnamese historical research and Eastern studies up to 1802. Students there are likely to be less well-off in terms of both financial and I suspect, English skills, than those at Fulbright University.
A neo-colonist? The thought has never occurred to me simply because these days, Mr Google knows everything and his knowledge is available for free to anyone with a cell phone and access to the internet. Besides, my contribution to the knowledge of young Vietnamese is so minuscule in the scheme of things and they could easily acquire it from Mr Google or numerous FB pages on the subject.
If I had a choice, I would go to a university outside of Hanoi or Saigon simply because the students at these universities do not have the opportunity to learn from great scholars like Uncle Pierre. If financial reward is a consideration, I would choose a private university if not, a public one. In the end, it makes no difference. The students, affluent or poor, will learn from you, which will make a difference to them and their generation compared to not having you teach.
On a related but different matter: In VN, a YouTuber named Quang Linh is very popular. He has 3.6M subscribers. He and his team of guys came to Angola as guest workers and, by chance, ended up helping villagers in Angola to grow vegetables, raise animals for food, drill wells for water, build schools and churches. They make their money from YouTube and donations from Vietnamese all around the world. In return, they help to lift some of the villagers out of poverty and transfer their knowledge of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Interested VSG members may want to check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVC3TN4IMyQ
Kind regards,
Tan Pham (NZ)
Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.
I very much apprciate this exchange about Fulbright. Please continue this thread. Also we (and the faculty and students) need to problematize Fulbright himself (and tghe famous program named after him), who was a very multi-sided figure regarding the war, racism and other issues in his long senatorial career (and prior also). The single msin goal, it seems to me, in a liberal education, is critical thinking, or, to paraphrase Marx, "question everything”.
Joe Berry
________
Joe Berry
21 San Mateo Road,
Berkeley, CA 94707
cell-510-999-0751
joeberry@igc.org or
joetracyberry@gmail.com
Skype: joeberry1948
Dear Pierre,
I also very much appreciate the self-reflection and just wanted to chime in, since I currently teach at Fulbright in Literature and am what the Vietnamese might call "viet kieu" myself.
Firstly, Fulbright has created the opportunity for scholars like myself, part of a very distinct generation of self-reflexive Vietnamese scholars who are only emerging after the war, to come back to Vietnam and reconnect with the country and its youth. For me, it invited me to think and live beyond a western-centric means, i.e. addressing ideas like "why go back when my parents worked so hard to come to the US," or "the US has the best institutions in the world for everyone," etc.
Relatedly, I think you raise an interesting point of reflection asking whether Fulbright is a neocolonial institution. It certainly qualifies as one, especially given the bilateral context it was born from. But I also think there has to be a certain undoing by means of going through, and to see the liberal arts institution as only possible in or meant for the West, and leave it at that, would be an example of the western-centric perspective I had just mentioned. My critique of calling anything neo-liberal is that often, we are so satisfied with having identified the thing that we don't think about how to move forward. Fulbright is not a perfect institution, but I'd like to make the case that many of my colleagues continuously think about this on an institutional but also granular level, so that this liberal arts institution, perhaps a Western idea, still takes a Vietnamese shape, defined by Vietnamese terms. I hope you'll get to hear about our colleagues who take students to the Can Gio Biosphere, to test waters for integrated science courses, but also to see how mangroves serve as a living archive for relationality (in my own global environmental literature course), or about the incorporation of District 5 in history classes to learn about the ethnic Chinese community. These are all ways we use the small student-centered classes to valorize our surroundings teaching in Vietnam.
Additionally, many of these students join Fulbright very curious about what a liberal arts education is, and how it might differ from schools in Vietnam. Some have the option of going abroad for school, and choose not to, while for others, Fulbright is the closest they might get to a foreign education experience. For many of our students, Fulbright is exactly what they crave in terms of novelty and rigor, and for a handful, it is still a difficult adjustment because they are used to lectures and instructor-centered education models. We have a handful of faculty who are Vietnamese citizens, trained abroad, but get to serve a Vietnamese public. Students absolutely love being in contact with prominent scholars in the field, including yourself, because they feel like they are being invited into a special world they wouldn't otherwise have access to. And I can say this is very much how I felt as a young student as well. Of course, that raises other problems about how our academic world is created, but only when the students get to take part, and imagine themselves in that world can they work to become a part of it and eventually redefine it.
All this to say, I think you raise an excellent point, and perhaps there was more to celebrate after your talk, including the students' curiosities and engagement, which are often self-initiated. I hope you'll still come to Fulbright next year so that we can continue this conversation.
With regards,
Yen
In a digression from the discussion about Fulbright University, I wrongly mentioned that Ung van Khiem went to France. Thanks to Charles Keith's diligent research, I want to correct this bit of misinformation. He did not.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
Pierre,
I did not respond to your paragraph about French educators. It all depends on the context.
Did you know that both my father, Ho Huu Tuong and Ung van Khiem were expelled from the College de Can Tho in 1926 for producing an underground paper? They both ended up in France. My father got a math degree, started his MA thesis then dropped it to become a Trotskyist. He and Phan van Hum organized the protests in front of the Elysee Palace in 1930 but avoided arrest and deportation because their role had been entirely behind the scenes. Meanwhile, Ung van Khiem was persuaded by Bui Cong Trung and Ha Huy Tap to go to Moscow. You know about his later career.
I attended the Lycee Marie Curie 1960-1966. One of my profs was the discarded French wife of a Vietnamese general (Nguyen van Xuan?). She taught geography with a mournful air. Another prof was a staunch Catholic and Petainist whom I loved despite her politics because she was really good at teaching Latin. When schools closed because of the Buddhist crisis, she invited those of us who took Greek to resume our reading at her house. So in the middle of Buddhist protests, we four girls (two French and two Vietnamese) read the Phaidon. Discussion of civil disobedience was a bit delayed when one of the girls claimed (rightly) that Plato defamed Xanthippe by portraying her as a shrew. The four girls consensus: "anybody married to Socrates would turn into a nag."
In the terminale, my history teacher was a thirty something woman newly arrived from France under the Alliance francaise. She was no apologist for the "mission civilsatrice."
I got to know about other teachers less directly. There were Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, monarchists and republicans, Petainists and Free French. I don't know if any felt they were enlightening the benighted natives.
One way or another, I received an excellent education at Marie Curie. I still rely on the knowledge I gained there about European history.
Hue-Tam
Pierre,
I love the self reflection! The issue you describe reminds me of some of the work on “brain drain” vs. “brain circulation, including a highly cited article by AnnaLee Saxenian in Studies in Comparative International Development (2005) (see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02686293), which argues that — contrary to fears of “brain drain” — migrants contribute significantly to their original home countries by building bridges and facilitating movement of resources from wealthy to less wealthy countries. My personal reading of the literature is that the evidence is quite strong in favor of this perspective. But I know and respect that many on this list will hold contrasting perspectives.
I also just spent the past academic year based in Saigon, with a primary mission of providing support to business and economics researchers looking to publish their work in English-language journals and—although I was primarily based at a couple of Vietnamese universities (University of Economics and Law and University of Economics-HCMC)--I, too, had some very positive engagements with both students and faculty at FUV. I actually wound up having a good number of meetings with both undergrad and masters level students from FUV after posting a note here on VSG last Tet, where I expressed a willingness to connect with anyone curious to chat about research, applying to doctoral programs, or about universities in the US, in general. So some students are, in fact, here on the listserv, or at least getting forwarded relevant posts. I also did some guest teaching sessions and participated in a couple public events at FUV. All were great experiences. Based on those experiences, I’m betting that FUV is going to be the source of a pretty substantial share of future foreign-trained PhDs from Vietnam!
I also had some very positive engagement with RMIT, which is quite close to FUV and substantially farther along in its development than FUV. In fact, it’s going to be quite interesting to see how FUV looks to differentiate itself from RMIT (beyond just its US v. Australian identity). But I do think RMIT is instructive to FUV’s likely future impact on the other institutions. Like all universities in Vietnam (and beyond), RMIT makes liberal use of adjunct lecturers, so a good number of lecturers in HCMC, including from UEL, UEH, and USSH, do also teach at RMIT and get exposure to and benefits from its fancier classrooms and superior resources. In my opinion and the opinion of lecturers I talked to in Saigon, this is a positive influence / pressure on the other universities, which see what the city’s most popular school is doing and look to get resources that will allow them to make changes in that direction. While I didn’t make it there yet, my understanding is that FPT university may be somewhat similar in this regard. The evolving competitive landscape between universities in the city and the country is really interesting to observe!
For what it’s worth, I do get the impression that our VSG community is still a bit biased towards engagement with institutions in Hanoi, so if you decide on USSH over FUV, you might also consider USSH-HCMC. Of course, you can also do both FUV and USSH. Personally, if I had the opportunity to do it again, I’d also be very tempted to position myself by the beach in order to support University of Danang!
All the Best, Markus
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Markus Taussig
Associate Professor & Fulbright Scholar (Vietnam ’22-‘23)
Management & Global Business Department
Rutgers Business School—Newark & New Brunswick
On Jul 5, 2023, at 3:07 PM, Pierre Asselin <passelin@sdsu.edu> wrote:
Beloved Comrades:
I come to you seeking counsel and wisdom. I’m completing the second edition of Vietnam’s American War. I intend to include a couple of sentences about Fulbright University in Saigon and its mission. It’s about the latter specifically that I need help.
I recently did a class via Zoom for students there. There was only a handful of them, but they impressed the hell out of me. I actually thought they were Viet kieu, their English being so good and their perspective on Vietnamese history being so different from the norm. I felt pretty good about myself when I was done with my talk, thinking I had contributed to their development as Vietnamese pupils capable of meeting Western academic standards.
And so, I had a couple of beers to celebrate my greatness. But then I got to thinking: Is this how French educators felt at the height of the colonial era in Vietnam? Were they telling themselves they were helping young Vietnamese achieve new and better standards, failing to recognize the debilitating long-term impact of their actions on the fabric of local society? And if so, didn’t my flash of greatness at Fulbright make me complicit in the recycling of colonial attitudes and tendencies? In other words, good as it might be as an institution of higher learning, and despite the fact that prominent members of this list and in our field teach there and sit on its board, is Fulbright Vietnam not the quintessential incarnation of American neo-colonialism? Is it not "poaching" good students and faculty from Vietnam's own universities? Don't the salaries it offers make it more difficult for Vietnamese public universities to hire and retain their faculty? Yes, the system and ideology officially governing the nation is problematic but, again, didn't the French say and think the same thing at the time?
I really don't know what to make of all this. I also ask because I’ll be on sabbatical next year and planned on doing something with Fulbright for the experience – and a few bucks. But now I’m thinking that I should go to USSH in Hanoi and offer my services there for free instead – or just do my research and leave everyone else alone.
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050