A Void on Viet Nam

ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

The U.S. can marshal aircraft carriers, a fleet of jets and half a million men for the war in Viet Nam, but when it comes to scholarship in Vietnamese language and culture, the nation is woefully unprepared. As Harvard Sinologist John K. Fairbank put it at a conference of Orientalists at the

University of Michigan last week: "We have been caught not only with our pants down, but with our pants off--there isn't even a national committee on Viet Nam studies."

Only three universities--Cornell, Yale and Hawaii--have strong enough studies on Southeast Asia to rate federal support under the National Defense Education Act in a program administered by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Cornell's is considered the best and biggest; it now enrolls 67 graduate students. Yet even Cornell has turned out only two Viet Nam experts at the Ph.D. level. Only a few thoroughly grounded Viet Nam scholars teach regularly in the U.S., the most notable of them being Paul Mus, a Frenchman who divides his time between Yale and the College de France.

The failure, as Fairbank sees it, is that U.S. scholars simply let French academicians worry about Viet Nam since France was involved there for so long. To staff its Southeast Asia Program, Cornell, in fact, has had to import French, British and Japanese experts. Another problem is the difficulty of gaining such expertise. A solid scholar on Viet Nam must master the Ciinese language, then Vietnamese, and also be able to handle the anthropology, economics, politics and history of that confusing country. That particular blend of ability and interest has been scarce, and it takes about ten years to train such a scholar.* The war itself, Fairbank notes wryly, should produce some men who are eager to study the area--but by the time they are ready to teach, the whole matter, hopefully, will once again be academic.

* The Defense Department's efforts to develop expertise on Viet Nam are confined mainly to language training. It sent 8,590 servicemen through twelve to 47 weeks of Vietnamese instruction last year, expects to increase that to 11,540 this year.

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