ABSTRACT
Students and others interested in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and in the domestic and international consequences of US policies toward Indochina usually are unaware of key issues defining much of Asian studies. The war in Vietnam, and more generally in the Indochinese nations of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, was, profoundly influenced by the involvement of US scholars of Asia and profoundly influenced the lives and careers of those scholars. Few realized the extent to which universities with Asian studies programs were dependent on governmental and corporate funding, often with strings attached. Vietnamization, usually identified as the policy of the Nixon administration, was a specific form of neocolonialism. A large number of Left intellectuals had romanticized and uncritically identified with the Soviet Union. Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars played a major role in organizing a number of national conferences in Carbondale and an effective international boycott of the Vietnam Center by Asia scholars.
