During Vietnam visit, Drew Faust stresses importance of remembrance in healing
Even decades after the Vietnam War, the United States and Vietnam are still surveying the conflict’s aftermath, seeking understanding and healing of wounds physical and spiritual, individual and widespread, Harvard President Drew Faust said today during a visit to the Southeast Asian nation. Faust, a historian of the American Civil War, spoke at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, offering her audience an at-times personal view of the conflict and how it affected her and others of her generation. She also suggested lessons that could be applied from the U.S. Civil War, and shared her sense that historians are critical to the two nations’ journey through the aftereffects. “What you know as the War of National Salvation against the Americans — what we call ‘Vietnam’ — indelibly shaped those of us coming of age in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s,” Faust said. “Even though I...