Huy Đức and the Rise and Fall of Renovation in Vietnam

This talk looks at the life and times of Huy Đức, the well-known Vietnamese journalist, historian and - since June 2024 - political prisoner.

Most coverage of Huy Ðức focuses on the recent conflict that landed him in jail, his alleged criticism of the long-time head of the security police and new communist party secretary general. This talk illuminates a longer history of resistance and activism on the part of Huy Ðức dating back to his days as a muckraking investigative journalist in Saigon in the 1990s. It explores his controversial history of postwar Vietnam, The Winning Side, which provoked outrage and acclaim when it was released abroad in 2013. And it considers what the arc of his life reflects about the rise and fall of "Renovation" in the post-Vietnam War era.

Speaker & chair biographies

Prof. Peter Zinoman is Helen Fawcett Professor of History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Between 2018 and 2021, he served as chairman of UC Berkeley's History Department. He is the author of the Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 (University of California Press, 2001) which won the Harry Benda Prize from the Association of Asian Studies and the John Fairbanks Prize from the American Historical Association. He is also the author of Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung (University of California Press, 2014). In 2002, Zinoman co-translated and edited Dumb Luck: A Novel by Vu Trong Phung (University of Michigan Press, 2002). In 2006, Zinoman founded the Journal of Vietnamese Studies at the University of California Press and he currently serves as its co-editor-in-chief. In 2016, he was awarded the Vietnam Studies Prize from the Phan Chau Trinh Culture Foundation based in Vietnam. His current book project explores politics and intellectual life in Hanoi during the 1950s.

Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

*Banner photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

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