The Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group (commonly known as Michigan State University Group and abbreviated MSUG ) is a technical assistance program provided to the government of South Vietnam as a state development effort by the US Department of State.
From 1955 to 1962, under a contract to the International Cooperation Administration in Washington and the Vietnamese government in Saigon, faculty and staff from Michigan State University consulted for agencies of the NgÃÆ''ÃÆ''nh Di? M regime. This group advises and trains Vietnamese personnel in public administration, police administration, and economics disciplines. MSUG works independently from most US government agencies, has unparalleled access to the presidency, and even helps in writing the country's new constitution. Some of his suggestions were made by the Vietnamese government and had positive results for the people of Vietnam. However, the group had limited influence on DiM's decision-making and on the course of events in Vietnam, and publications by dissatisfied faculty led to the termination of the DiM contract.
When the implications later emerged that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated MSUG as a front for covert operations, the technical assistance program became the cause of cà © lÃÆ'¨bre in the early years of the anti-war movement.
Video Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group
Project forecasts and startups
During his own exile in the early 1950s, NgÃÆ' '? ÃÆ'¬nh Di? M meets and befriends Wesley R. Fishel, a former military language specialist with a doctorate in international relations from the University of Chicago. Fishel "was impressed by anticommunist and socio-political views in Di M, and the two men often corresponded." When Fishel was employed in 1951 as an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, he invited Di? M to join him. Two years later, as an assistant director of the University Government's Research Bureau, Fishel appointed Di? M as a Southeast Asian consultant.
The result was a symbiosis: Di'm's visit to the United States enabled him to build the political support he needed to be installed as prime minister of South Vietnam in July 1954; in turn Fishel became one of the closest advisors and confidant Di? On the advice of Fishel, and already aware of MSU's ability, DiMeminta part of the assistance package from the U.S. International Cooperation Administration. entering a "technical assistance" contract with Michigan State. Thus, MSU was asked to use its expertise to help stabilize the Vietnamese economy, increase government bureaucracy, and control the ongoing communist insurgency.
Michigan State, a land-grant pioneering university, has since its foundation believed in turning theory into praxis; for example, his agricultural extension services make his research available to farmers throughout Michigan for practical use. Due to the emphasis on practical education and community involvement, the school correctly claimed that "the state is our campus". John A. Hannah University President in particular is a major supporter of so-called service-oriented institutions; for him, it is the next logical step to expand that role internationally, and declare without hyperbole that it means that "the world is our campus".
When the request for help came through US government channels, Hannah, who was very anticommunist, was very interested in pursuing the contract. He sent a small evaluation contingent to Vietnam, consisting of three heads of departments to be involved - Edward W. Weidner (political science), Arthur F. Brandstatter (police administration), and Charles C. Killingsworth (economics) - along with James H. Dennison, head of university public relations and administrative assistant Hannah. After a brief two-week visit, this quartet reported in October 1954 that an emergency was in Vietnam, and recommended that the project be implemented immediately. The report states that although short preparation time can lead to errors, it is "important... to get a running program that is at least [at least] a reasonable chance of success". Hannah approved the contract, forming the Michigan State University Group, which will operate under the authority of the United States Embassy Operations Mission (USOM). Hannah also confirmed Weidner's recommendation that Fishel be appointed head of the project, a position held by Fishel from the beginning of the project until early 1958.
MSUG personnel have various reasons to volunteer for these overseas services, each a reflection of the university's motivation for the entire MSUG project: as a moral obligation, to support struggling young people; as an instrument of US foreign policy, to fuel the growth of "communist imperialism"; and as an academic exercise, to test their theoretical ideas in real-world "laboratories." Incentives pay "difficulties" and other benefits that almost double the salary of a professor (tax-free), along with the prospect of personal progress in academics, as well as persuasive.
Maps Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group
Stage One: 1955-57
The first two-year contract started when the first contingent of professors and staff arrived in Saigon on May 20, 1955. They found a city involved in a rebellious rebellion by the forces of BÃÆ'¬nh XuyÃÆ'ªn, with shootings and street battles threatening not only At the official residence of m but also hotel where MSUG personnel are placed temporarily. At the peak of the disturbance, the hotel rooms were ransacked and looted, and some professors lost all of their possessions. Pending MSUG academic programs are suspended and their focus is rapidly shifting to improving local government administration and police services.
Refugee Commissariat
A direct concern for Di'm is a social upheaval caused by some 900,000 people who fled from the communist North during the 300-day "free movement" period established by the 1954 Geneva Agreement. This great current requires resettlement services and infrastructure development, provided by a government agency known as COMIGAL (Refugee Commissariat; its acronym is derived from its French name). MSUG consults for COMIGAL in such a way during the first months of the program that other activities fall by the wayside.
One MSUG proposal with positive results is a decentralized bureaucratic idea for COMIGAL. By deploying small offices throughout the village, COMIGAL was able to improve the responsiveness of those offices; funding for infrastructure projects is generally approved by Saigon in less than two weeks. Decentralization also allows offices to work directly with local leaders, who as a result feel that their input and participation are important.
On the other hand, MSUG can not convince Di'm about the validity of land claims made by Montagnard , indigenous people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Thousands of refugees - with government approval and encouragement - become permanent squatters on land "already cleared by highlands for planting". Part of DiM's intention with this placement is to create a sympathetic "human wall", mostly Catholic settlers against communist infiltration from nearby North Vietnam and Cambodia. However, both the Montagnards and the majority of Buddhists resent being ruled by the Catholic regime, a minority religious group they see as a shameless colonial. This opposition and the brutal suppression of Di'm pushed these groups toward further insurrection and, ultimately, communist rule.
National Administration Institute
Even when the time is monopolized by refugee assistance, the MSU Group pursues part of its academic goals. As a "public administration" in terms of its contract, MSUG designed, financed, and implemented the expansion of the National Institute of Administration (NIA), a civil service training school. NIA had started as a two-year training school in the resort town of Da Lat in January 1953. On the recommendation of MSUG, the school was moved to Saigon and gradually extended into a four-year program.
Together with his help in developing the new Saigon college and teaching class, MSUG was instrumental in the huge expansion of the NIA library, which in 1962 had more than 22,000 books and other documents. Libraries are considered one of the greatest successes of MSUG, and NIA affiliates are the longest surviving MSUG projects. However, the use of libraries suffers from the simple fact that most of the documents are in English, not Vietnamese or French; and by the end of the MSUG contract the library is threatened by limited accessibility, poor maintenance, and a lack of qualified Vietnamese personnel to become its staff.
Police administration
The most influential - and ultimately, controversial aspect - MSUG technical assistance is in the area of ​​police administration, where the group not only provides consulting and training services, but also material assistance. In general, MSUG was responsible for distributing US aid, provided through USOM, until 1959 when USOM formed its own police officers. MSUG staff act as consultants to determine the needs of the police group - and then do the procurement itself. MatÃÆ' Â © riel includes "revolvers, riot guns, ammunition, tear gas, jeeps and other vehicles, handcuffs, office equipment, traffic lights and communications equipment".
MSUG then trains Vietnamese personnel in the use and maintenance of this equipment. In general, MSUG trained instructors, who can then teach others; direct instruction, except in special cases such as revolver training for presidential guards, "performed only as a temporary". The police administration project is largely successful in this regard, since the training is based on direct demonstration and thus much faster and more real. Also, the Vietnamese instructors that MSUG taught quickly assumed their own training. At the same time, class sessions in the principles of procedure and police theory suffer from a number of problems that limit their success. Some MSUG professors speak Vietnamese or French, leading to translation delays and loss of information. In addition, the American-style lecture is the source of dissonance for the student body appointed in the French juridical system. (This is also a problem in NIA classes taught by MSUG staff.)
Police administration consultation and training is most effective with SÃÆ' â € < »retà © Ã… ©, Vietnam's national law enforcement agency, in part because most of the equipment is shipped to this agency. In the same way, the city police department (which receives less equipment) is less affected - the largest local increase is in traffic control in Saigon. With regard to civilian guards, there is almost no effect.
The civilian guard is a 60,000 paramilitary organization that MSUG hopes to reform into something resembling US state police clothing, an organization familiar to professors. This will involve rural organizations whose members will live in the communities they serve. However, Saigon and the US Military Assistance Advisory Group preferred that civilian guards become more armed paramilitary troops, organized into regiments and living in garrisons, who can carry out the duties of the national police and support the national army. As a result of this impasse, very little equipment that MSUG had planned for civilian guards was distributed until 1959, leaving civilian guards unprepared when a major communist insurgency began in the same year.
Employment issues
One of MSUG's disadvantages is that in many cases the university does not have the staffing for project staff and continues the scheduled classes in East Lansing. This is the case at MSUG, and this group is required to lease extensively outside the university to fulfill its contract with Vietnam, often giving new academic staff rankings (generally assistant professors or lecturers). Personnel problems may have the most significant consequences in the police administration division. Although the Michigan State Police School Administration and Public Safety "were internationally recognized during the Cold War era", it lacked the experience of much-needed areas of resistance and counter-insurgency, and department head Arthur Brandstatter recruited appropriate new personnel. At the top of the police administration project, only four of his thirty-three mentors became Michigan State employees before MSUG, and many have never even visited the East Lansing campus.
Apparently, some of these police advisers also work for the Central Intelligence Agency. They formed a separate group, setting up their own offices apart from police administration staff at MSUG headquarters in Saigon, "and only responsible to the American Embassy in Saigon". CIA members worked closely with special security units of SÃÆ' Â »retÃÆ'Â © between 1955 and 1959. Although they were nominally under the auspices of MSUG, the specification of their activities remained unknown to MSUG throughout. (MSUG files "support the contention that agents are not spies", CIA records remain classified to this day.)
The existence of CIA groups is not hidden from MSUG staff; on the contrary, it is common knowledge for professors, if not openly discussed. The 1965 general review of the project is quite an issue: when MSUG "forced USOM to set up its own public security division in July 1959 [,] USOM also absorbed the current CIA unit that has operated in MSUG". This almost parent-like statement will provide a boost for sensational exposure.
Stage Two: 1957-59
The two-year contract was renewed in 1957. The second phase of MSUG was marked by an increase in the scope of operations, particularly in educational programs, while its security commitments also grew. "This is the period of Michiganders everywhere." However, even as the operation increased, with staff covering the project peak of fifty-two Americans and about 150 Vietnamese, MSUG operated under a reduced level of influence. In early 1958, Wesley Fishel ended his tenure as head of program and returned to the United States. With the departure of Fishel comes the end of a three-week breakfast at a presidential home that professors have enjoyed with Di? M; without direct access to the presidential ears, MSUG swayed with significantly restricted administration. At the same time, the Vietnamese government has begun to strengthen its power over the country, and therefore "loses most of its passion for innovation".
After 1958, the role of police administration was almost entirely advisory, since the trained Vietnamese instructors of MSUG "at the time were running their own show". As an adviser, MSUG helps SÃÆ' Â »retÃÆ'Â © - which has now been renamed the Vietnam Bureau of Investigation, in an effort to reduce the negative public image of a special police institution - to establish a national identity card, a program was launched in 1959.
Stage Three: 1959-62
The third contract covers a fraction of the previous contract; The MSUG work is almost exclusively related to NIA and academic pursuits. In part this is because USOM initiated its own police advisory unit and took over this role from MSUG, particularly work with civilian guards, who have full hands against communist guerrillas.
The renewal of the 1959 contract also contains a clause illustrating DiM's increasing sensitivity to criticism: it states that personal records and notes of MSUG staff will not be used "against security or Vietnam's interests". This provision goes against the idea of ​​academic freedom, and some professors choose to ignore it. For example, Robert Scigliano, an MSU political scientist who served as assistant head of the project during 1957-1959, wrote an article in 1960 about South Vietnamese political parties calling attention to Di'm's oppression of the opposition. In? M was quite annoyed with the article he saw fit to mention to MSU President Hannah when the last visited Vietnam in early 1961, saying it was "not the kind of thing she likes to see writing MSU personnel".
The NIA, in early 1961, made an official request for a three year extension after 30 June 1962, the end of the third MSUG contract. MSU expressed willingness to pursue a small project focused solely on the Institute, but this did not happen.
Dissent and dismissal
As the project progressed, the initial optimism of the professors gave way to pragmatic considerations that often frustrated them and frustrated them. MSUG often finds well-intended suggestions either directly ignored, or co-opted into practice; in one instance among many people, Di? m using a national identification card registry SÃÆ'Â »retÃÆ'Â © to tear down its dissidents. As a result, some professors came home from their duty tour and started writing articles that criticized the Di regime? M and US involvement in Vietnam. Two appeared in The New Republic's magazine in 1961 and led to the end of MSUG.
The first, by Adrian Jaffe, an English professor at the University of Saigon, and Milton C. Taylor, an MSUG economist, entitled "A Crumbling Bastion: Flattery and Lies Will Not Save Vietnam" and appearing in June 1961. is a spicy indictment of regime Di? m. Although Jaffe and Taylor play embarrassed in the article by not naming Fishel or MSU - as if their academic affiliation as stated in the first page sidebar is not a dead giveaway - they do not pull a punch when it comes to Di? M and his family. "The Vietnamese government is an absolute dictatorship, run entirely by the President, with the help of his family.... [It] sets a modern record for nepotism."
Then Frank C. Child, an MSUG economist who spent two years as a project consultant while traveling throughout South Vietnam, wrote "Vietnam - The Eleventh Hour", published in December 1961. He goes further than Jaffe and Taylor. by suggesting publicly that "military coup is probably the only way" to save Vietnam.
These articles infuriated Di? M, demanding that the professors be criticized by the State of Michigan. The university administration is reluctant, because to do so would be a violation of academic freedom. On the other hand, MSU does not want to lose a lucrative contract with South Vietnam, thus offering that MSUG will be more careful in its staff selection, choosing only those who promise to abide by the terms of the contract, and who will only "write scientific, scientific studies, and sensational journalistic articles. "
However, however, will not be affected, and demanded the termination of the project. The group left Vietnam in June 1962.
ExposÃÆ' Â ©
Four years after the MSUG was dissolved, an exposition entitled "The University on the Make" appeared in Ramparts magazine. Editor Warren Hinckle, Robert Scheer and Sol Stern write this article in collaboration with Stanley K. Sheinbaum, who served as MSUG's home campus project coordinator from 1957 until his departure from university "for various reasons" in 1959. Image of the article Jaffe-Taylor and Sheinbaum's disappointment with the project, the article painted a clear portrait: Fishel as an ambitious "operator" with more power and influence with Di? m than the US Ambassador; MSU as a "parvenu institution" who wants to trade academic integrity for an important role on the world stage; and MSUG as conspirators know and are eager for the CIA.
The Ramparts article, though strongly based on the 1965 book Technical Assistance in Vietnam , largely ignores the academic aspects of the study-and training of police administration projects. Instead of mentioning the establishment of the National Police Academy and the High School of Commerce SÃÆ' Â »retÃÆ'Â ©, where the MSUG staff" plan the curriculum and serve as a classroom lecturer ", this implies that the project requires little more than training of firearms and handcuffs channeled. It also focused closely on CIA connections, and extrapolated the lines "the University group refused to provide protection for this unit [after 1959]" meaning that MSUG had previously provided protection for "cloak-and-dagger" jobs. In conclusion, the article effectively reduces the entire MSUG project into a single line of burners: "what does the university do with weapons?"
The Ramparts article deliberately muckraking, and distorted and dramatized many of the "facts"; some of these are then recognized incorrectly. Nevertheless, it reaches the intended audience, and offers powerful food for the newborn anti-war movement. Along with the striking issue of the CIA operating under the guise of a university, more and more American students and faculty began to question the use of higher education institutes as U.S. foreign policy instruments
Aftermath
Michigan State University, like many American universities, continues to contract for overseas technical assistance programs, but never again on the Michigan State University scale. Ultimately, MSU sees very little academic benefit from her "Vietnam adventure". There are no new courses or special courses starting at the home campus, and of the eighteen assigned professors from East Lansing, five are not returning to college, and the other four leave within two years of their return. One of the indirect results was the International Study Office and Program, which was created in 1956 to provide campus coordination and administrative support for Vietnamese projects (as well as projects in Colombia, Brazil, and Okinawa). In 1964 the office received a new home, today known as the International Center; the building cost was about $ 1.2 million and was financed with the $ 25 million portion MSUG received from the US government during its seven-year Vietnamese contract (largely used to pay off debts, salaries, field fees, and administration fees).
In the midst of rising anti-war protests, President John Hannah left MSU in 1969 to head the United States Agency for International Development - the successor of the International Cooperation Administration that has started the MSUG contract. Although a sudden departure from MSU may suggest otherwise, Hannah does not doubt the viability of the project; many years later, he stated, "We never felt it necessary for the University to apologize... for what we were trying to do in Vietnam, I think if the State of Michigan faces the same choice again in the same context, it might agree to help the US Government as we do. "Hannah's temporary replacement for president is a professor of economics Walter Adams, who has long questioned the efficacy of the university's technical assistance program and which in 1961 encouraged Jaffe and Taylor to publish" A Crumbling Bastion ".
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments