Howard Jones to Speak at the 2013 Vietnam Center and Archive Conference

Howard Jones to Speak at the 2013 Vietnam Center and Archive Conference

University of Alabama Research Professor Emeritus Howard Jones will speak at the 2013 Vietnam Center and Archive Conference. This year’s conference will explore the events of 1963, a year that has “long been viewed as a watershed in both the history of the Vietnam War and in the evolution of the United States’ intervention in that conflict. The Battle of Ap Bac, the ‘Buddhist crisis’ and the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc, the abortive ‘Kennedy withdrawal’ of U.S. military advisors from South Vietnam, the overthrow and death of Ngo Dinh Diem in the Saigon coup of November, the Kennedy assassination that same month, the Ninth Plenum of the Vietnam Worker’s Party—all of these events and many others shaped the subsequent escalation of the Vietnam War and contributed to its transformation into a major international conflict.”

Jones’s presentation, entitled “JFK’s Plan For a Partial Withdrawal From Vietnam,” explores President Kennedy’s plan for gradual disengagement in Vietnam and challenges the popularly-held notion that the Kennedy Administration had no serious plans to withdraw from the Vietnam conflict.