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After Saigon’s Fall: The Postwar Decade (1975-1985)

The Contemporary History Institute hosts the 2025 Baker Peace Conference, themed "After Saigon’s Fall: The Postwar Decade (1975-1985)," on Feb. 20-21 in Walter Hall Rotunda.

The Baker Conference, a spring staple at Ģ����Ƶ University since the 1980s, returns with a keynote address by renowned Vietnam scholar Peter Zinoman on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 7:30 p.m. Zinoman is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as Chairman of the History Department.  He is the author of the  and . He is also the co-translator of  and the founding editor-in-chief of the . He is currently writing a book about northern Vietnamese anti-Stalinism during the 1950s.

The conference will also feature three panels of experts on the Vietnam War and the Southeast Asian region. The opening panel, on Thursday, Feb. 20, from 3 to 5 p.m., will examine the consequences of the Vietnam War for the nations of "Indochina": Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

There will be two additional panels on Friday, Feb. 21. The first, from 10 a.m. to noon, will look at the role of the "Cold War Allies," including the United States, the People's Republic of China, and the Soviet Union. The final panel, from 3 to 5 p.m., will then focus on the war’s after-effects on "Southeast Asian Neighbors" and will feature experts on Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Coffee, light snacks and other refreshments will be available to attendees throughout both days of the conference. We hope to see you there.

2025 Baker Peace Conference Schedule

All events are in the Walter Hall Rotunda.

Thursday, Feb. 20

Panel 1: Indochina, 3-5 p.m.

• , Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
• , Associate Professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University
• , Research Assistant Professor at the Vietnam Center & Archive at Texas Tech University
• , Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon

Keynote Address: 7:30-9 p.m.

• , Professor of History and Chairman of the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley

Friday, Feb. 21

Panel 2: Cold War Allies, 10 a.m.-noon

• , Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech
• , Professor of History and Don Betz Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma
• , Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
• Ingo Trauschweizer, Professor of History at Ģ����Ƶ University

Panel 3: Southeast Asian Neighbors, 3-5 p.m.

• , Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington
• , Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
• , Founding President of the Viet Nam Center for Economic and Strategic Studies
• , Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian History at Murdoch University

About the Baker Peace Conference

The Baker Peace Conference is an annual event that brings together a diverse group of leading experts to discuss a significant national or international issue related to peace.

The first Baker Peace Conference took place in 1988, six years after the late Dr. John C. Baker, the University's president from 1945-62, and his wife, Elizabeth, established the John and Elizabeth Baker Peace Studies Endowment to encourage the education of students and the general public in the means by which peace can be established and maintained throughout the world. The Baker Conferences are jointly sponsored by the Contemporary History Institute and the Baker Peace Studies Program.

All events are free and open to the public. Institute students participate in these conferences and are involved in helping to organize them.

Conferences

• 2022 Baker Peace Conference | Technology and Freedom: A Brave New World, on Feb. 24-25
• 2017 Baker Peace Conference: "Communism: Reflections on a Violent Century"
• 2016 Baker Peace Conference: "History, War, and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East"
• 2015 Baker Peace Conference: "The Vietnam War: A Fifty-Year Retrospective"
• Past Conferences

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