Remembering Ngô Vĩnh Long, Renowned Scholar of Vietnam and Antiwar Activist

Abstract

Internationally renowned historian and antiwar activist Ngô Vĩnh Long died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bangor, Maine on October 12, 2022, at the age of seventyeight. A professor of History at the University of Maine from 1985 until his death, Dr. Long was a leading scholar of the Vietnam/Indochina War and of the history of Vietnam from ancient times through French colonialism and US neocolonialism, postwar Vietnam, US-Vietnam relations, and Southeast and East Asia, especially China. From his undergraduate years at Harvard until the end of his life, Ngô Vĩnh Long was a courageous intellectual activist and an activist intellectual. He often described himself as a proud Vietnamese patriot who cared deeply about Vietnam, its past, and its suffering, as well as about the United States, his second home. Even in the darkest of times, he maintained his vision and hope for a much better Vietnam, a more egalitarian US, and much better US-Vietnam relations. Long sometimes described himself and was considered by some others as a pacifist. This is accurate if by “pacifist”wemean an opponent of war and a promoter of peace, reconciliation, and justice. But Professor Long was not the kind of pacifist who would uncompromisingly and openly condemn all expressions of violence, such as those exerted by Vietnamese anti-colonial and anti-imperialist revolutionaries, who were not always nonviolent in their struggles for freedom and independence. At the same time, he always worked to offer alternatives to violent responses to oppression, exploitation, and domination. Much of Ngô Vĩnh Long’s scholarly and activist priorities and commitments can be traced back to formative influences in his family upbringing and his youthful experiences in Vietnam. These influences and experiences shaped his commitment to speak truth to power. From his youth until the end of his life, Long was profoundly moved by the human-caused suffering of Vietnamese people, which he dedicated his life to alleviating. He believed in providing independent analyses regardless of the personal, career, and other risks he faced from those in Vietnam and in the United States challenged by his interpretations and actions. He had an unshakable commitment to study and educate others about the violent and unjust economic, political, and cultural realities of French colonialism, US neocolonialism, Chinese imperialism, and other expressions of domination in the contemporary world. In taking such positions, commitments, and actions, Ngô Vĩnh Long did not live under any illusions. He fully expected, and accepted, the negative consequences of his beliefs on his personal life, intellectual development, and professional career.