Forty Years Later: Vietnam Symposium Looks Back at Tet Offensive

Forty years ago, fading Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops used the beginning of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year to launch an audacious and desperate military campaign that surprised the U.S. and its Allies.

The Tet Offensive ultimately resulted in a U.S. victory, but public sentiment for the war – prompted by media coverage – quickly began to sour and ultimately turned the win into a tactical and public relations quagmire.

A discussion on the media and the Tet Offensive launched the Vietnam Center’s Sixth Triennial Vietnam Symposium, held March 13-15 at the Holiday Inn Park Plaza.

The conference gathered hundreds of veterans, historians, politicians, journalists and other scholars in Lubbock to hash over a wide-ranging slate of issues related to the conflict. Participants had access to a total 35 sessions featuring nearly 100 panelists and speakers.

Sessions tackled topics ranging from major battles of the Tet Offensive to special operations and missions during the war.

Speakers included:

• Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, discussed his 13 years as a war correspondent with the Associated Press.
• Barry Zorthian discussed his tenure as head of the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office in Saigon during the Vietnam War.
• Richard Pyle spoke about his years as a war correspondent in Vietnam and Saigon Bureau Chief with Associated Press.
• George Esper, spoke on his ten years as an Associated Press war correspondent in Vietnam. He was the last AP bureau chief in Saigon and was there when the city fell in April 1975.
• Don North discussed his years as a war correspondent with ABC and NBC News.
• Louis Campomenosi of Tulane University talked about early roots of an “opposition press."
• Carolyn Eisenberg of Hofstra University spoke on 1968 and its aftermath.
• Erik B. Villard, of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, presented new insights into the Battle of Hue, Tet 1968.
• Jonathan Hood, of the Office of the Surgeon General, spoke on prioritizing casualty evacuation during the Vietnam War.

The symposium also featured keynote addresses from:

• Ambassador Raymond Burghardt, director of east-west seminars for the East-West Center in Hawaii and former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam.
• Ambassador Charles Ray, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office and former U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia.
• Mark Moyar, Kim T. Adamson chair of insurgency and terrorism at the U.S. Marine Corps University will speak on Major Debates on the History of the Vietnam War.

 

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