PU The Vietnam War - Class 2: The US Gets Involved - (1955-1964)

April 10, 2025
7:00pm - 8:30pm

With the first U.S. military assistance to the French in 1950, a generation-long commitment to anticommunist nation-building project in South Vietnam began. After the French defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954, the US engaged in an authoritarian modernization program, pumping millions of dollars of aid into S. Vietnam, supporting the unpopular and autocratic, S. Vietnamese leader Ngô  -Dinh Diêm. After  S. Vietnamese generals deposed, and killed, Diem in a 1963 coup, South Vietnamese national politics devolved into instability. The U.S. then militarily escalated the War in S. Vietnam. The U.S. escalation simultaneously attempted to prevent the infiltration of N. Vietnamese communist forces from the North; contain a pro-communist insurgency in the South; and prevent the implosion of the S. Vietnamese government.

Instructor: Dr. James F. Siekmeier received his PhD in History from Cornell in 1993, specializing in the history of U.S. foreign relations towards Latin America. He has taught at colleges and universities in Washington, D.C., New York, Iowa, Texas, and in Bolivia, on two Fulbright Grants (where he taught courses on North American history in Spanish). From 2001 to 2007 he compiled the American Republics volumes in the Foreign Relations of the US Series, the official documentary history of US foreign policy put out by the US State Department. He has published The Bolivian Revolution and the United States, 1952-Present (Penn State University Press, 2011) as well Latin American Nationalism: Identity in Globalizing World (Bloomsbury, 2017). Currently, he is a Professor of History at West Virginia University. He is working a history of the “war on drugs” in South America from the 1970s to the present.

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ABOUT THE OCPL'S PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY SERIES:

In 1951, the Ohio County Public Library's librarian, Virginia Ebeling, referenced British historian Thomas Carlyle, who said, “the public library is a People’s University,” when she initiated a new adult education program with that name. Miss Ebeling charged the library with the responsibility of reaching “as many people in the community as possible.” In keeping with that tradition of public libraries as sanctuaries of free learning for all people, the Ohio County Public Library revived the series in 2010.

The People’s University features courses (taught by experts in each subject) that enable patrons to pursue their goal of lifelong learning in classic subjects such as history, music appreciation, philosophy, and literature. Patrons may attend as many classes as they wish. There are no tests of other requirements and all programs are free and open to the public. For more information about PU: The Cold War, EMAIL US,  visit ohiocountylibrary.org or call the library at 304-232-0244.