You Should Know
Vietnam in War and Peace
In early 1975, a young Patrick Leahy, only recently elected to his first term as a United States senator from Vermont, cast a deciding vote on the Senate Armed Services Committee that helped effectively end funding of the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. Many years later Leahy, who would go on to become the third-longest serving U.S. senator in history, worked with fellow senators John McCain and John Kerry, prominent veteran activists, and others to reopen U.S. relations with Vietnam. This long, intimate involvement with the U.S.-Vietnam relationship by Leahy (now a UVM President’s Distinguished Fellow) helped frame a two-day forum in early October at the university, titled “The U.S. War in Vietnam: Looking Back After 50 Years,” that examined many differing aspects of the Vietnam War, from the experience of those on the ground in Southeast Asia and the U.S. during the conflict, to current relations between the two countries.
Watch the Keynote by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss →
Re-Energizing Local News
An investment of $5.5 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will dramatically expand efforts by the Center for Community News (CCN) at the University of Vermont to grow partnerships between local news outlets and universities across the country, forging a path to sustainability for local reporting in the regions that need it most. The CCN will now ramp up research, programming, education, and advocacy for student reporting programs, which are playing an increasingly vital role in reporting local news for Americans. CCN is the first and only organization in the country devoted to growing news-academic partnerships – a model that has emerged over the past decade in response to shrinking local news resources, fewer beat reporters and diminished statehouse coverage.
