When I saw this headline, I was curious to see who the Harvard professor was.  It was none other than Thomas Vallely, who is not a professor but an administrator with neither an academic appointment nor a Ph.D.  More importantly, this is the same Thomas Vallely (TV) who made a series of cruel and insensitive statements about civilian deaths during the war in an interview that was published earlier this year in Politico.  I listed and commented on the most egregious quotes in this August 2018 article, More Demons Unleashed After Fulbright University Vietnam Official Drops Rhetorical Bombshells. 

Apparently, Prime Minister Phuc is unaware of this background information or, if he is,  considers it so much water under the bridge.  While I understand the nature of politics as the art of compromise, there are some lines that should not be crossed.  

What was most striking about this article was TV’s proposal to name the “most important lecture hall” in the Fulbright University Vietnam (FUV) school of public policy and management after the late John McCain.  Yes, the same John McCain who could never bring himself to properly thank the two Vietnamese men who fished him out of Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi after his jet was shot down in October 1967, thereby saving his life – TWICE.  The first time was from drowning and the second was by protecting him from an understandably angry crowd that wanted to finish the job. 

This is also the same John McCain who repeatedly referred to Vietnamese as “gooks” in various speeches and who never met a war he didn’t like.  (Sorry, but his death bed concession about Iraq doesn’t count.  While always better late than never, still too little, too late.)  Can’t TV and associates do better than that, I ask myself rhetorically?   

What’s next, the Bob Kerrey Auditorium?  It could be yet another feather in his cap, in addition to having his very own war crimes exhibit in the HCMC War Remnants Museum.  Yet another insult to the memory of the 4 million Vietnamese who were killed during the US war, the survivors, and the Viet Nam of 2018.  Since FUV has chosen to cross that line, why not the Richard M. Nixon or Lyndon B. Johnson Administration Building or the Robert McNamara Student Center?  

TV is a one-man rhetorical wrecking ball, living proof that Fulbright University Vietnam desperately needs a public relations makeover.  

Shalom (שלום), MAA