Conference Call for Papers and Panels
“1975:  The End of the Vietnam War”

April 10-12, 2025, Lubbock, Texas

The Vietnam Center & Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive and Institute for Peace & Conflict at Texas Tech University are pleased to announce a Vietnam War conference focused on the year 1975. This conference will approach a wide range of historical events and topics by hosting presenters who examine diplomatic, military, international, regional, social, cultural, and domestic aspects of the Vietnam War. We also seek presentations that reflect the recent and emerging scholarship on the policies, strategies, and decisions of the military, political, and diplomatic leaders of all nations involved as the war came to an end.

North Vietnam launched what would be the last Spring Offensive of the war on March 10, 1975. While Republic of Vietnam (RVN) military forces put up strong defenses in strategic locations to include Ban Me Thuột, Xuân Lộc, and Phan Rang, absent additional U.S. military supplies and support, many South Vietnamese units withdrew under heavy fire to help defend Saigon. Despite RVN forces fighting bravely to defend the city, Saigon ultimately fell on April 30, 1975, ending the Vietnam War. In the days leading up to the fall of Saigon, Americans and Vietnamese worked together, identifying buildings and locations for possible helicopter evacuation flights and prepositioning fuel and necessary supplies should the need arise. As People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces started their final assault on Saigon on April 29, U.S. President Gerald Ford ordered the evacuation of all Americans and Vietnamese nationals at risk of persecution when the communist Vietnamese took control of the city. The largest helicopter evacuation in history, Operation Frequent Wind resulted in the evacuation of more than 7,000 Americans and Vietnamese to locations in the region and to U.S. ships, to include the USS Midway, stationed in the South China Sea. Within Vietnam, while the war officially ended on April 30, the year 1975 continued as a year of political persecution and imprisonment for many remaining South Vietnamese citizens who worked with the governments and military forces of the Republic of Vietnam and the U.S.

This conference seeks to explore all related topics, both as discreet areas of interest as well as interconnected aspects of larger events. We want to continue examining the issues related to what brought the various parties to end the war in 1975 and what happened in its aftermath. We encourage presentations that examine other topics such as the social and religious aspects of the war, the effect of journalism and reporting, and the efforts to end the war through international diplomacy. We desire to include international perspectives and seek presentations that reflect the perspectives of all participant nations. Presentations by veterans and wartime participants are encouraged, especially RVN military veterans, U.S. military veterans, U.S. Navy crew members on the USS Midway and other ships in the South China Sea, U.S. and RVN civilians active in Vietnam to include embassy personnel, government officials, Air America pilots and crews, and anyone else present in Vietnam during the final four months of the Vietnam War. We also encourage proposals from graduate students and graduate student travel grants might be made available for select students.

This conference will be hosted in Lubbock, Texas. Conference organizers welcome individual proposals as well as pre-organized panel proposals that include a moderator and three individual presentations. Conference sessions will follow the standard 90-minute format to include 60 minutes for presentations (20 minutes/presentation) followed by 30 minutes for questions/discussion. All presentations will be video recorded and made publicly available after the conference via the Vietnam Center & Archive website. Select papers may also be published.

Proposal submission deadline is September 1, 2024.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and separate two-page CV/resume to VietnamConference.TTU@gmail.com. If submitting a panel proposal, please include separate abstracts for each proposed presentation and short CVs/resumes for each speaker.

This conference will be hosted at the

MCM Elegante Hotel & Suites

801 Avenue Q, Lubbock, TX 79401

1-806-763-1200

https://www.mcmelegantelubbock.com

Please contact us at vnca@ttu.edu if you have any questions about this event.

Thank you for your interest in this conference.