Dr. Phan Thi Phi Phi, one of three Vietnamese plaintiffs in a lawsuit against American chemical manufacturers, and Susan Hammond, deputy director of the New York-based Fund for Reconciliation and Development, will discuss this historic case in a lecture titled “Agent Orange: A New Vietnam War” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., Bates College.

The event, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by Maine Campus Compact, an organization of college and university presidents committed to the civic purposes of higher education, the Bates College history department, and Women of Color at Bates.

During the Vietnam War, the United States used the chemical Agent Orange to kill trees that gave cover to the enemy and to cut food supply. Western experts believe that more than 40 million liters of the dioxin-containing Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam.

While Hanoi claims that as many as two million Vietnamese are thought to be suffering several health effects including cancers and immunodeficiency from Agent Orange, the U.S. federal government insists that there is no proof linking Agent Orange with any illnesses. These differences over the Agent Orange issue have been a source of contention between the two governments since they renewed diplomatic ties in 1995.

The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 2004, against more than 30 U.S. chemical companies, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The first hearing took place on Monday.

The New York Times has described the Agent Orange lawsuit as “an important test of the reach of American courts, drawing worldwide interest and setting off a fierce debate among international-law experts,” after the U.S. Justice Department urged the court to dismiss the suit.

Dr. Phi Phi, one of the Vietnamese plaintiffs, studied epidemiology at Hanoi University of Medicine, and has been investigating the link between rates of cancer and exposure to dioxin in Vietnam. Having served as director of Hospital No.1, a mobile facility in the heavily sprayed provinces of Quang Nam and Quang Ngai, Phi Phi believed that she was a victim of dioxin herself.

Susan Hammond has lived in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, working on projects that help build mutual understanding and respect between the United States and these three South East Asian nations. Hammond has coordinated projects that examine and address the effects of Agent Orange and unexploded ordinances. She is currently working with other organizations to develop an educational and fundraising campaign that aims to address the long-term health and ecological consequences of the use of Agent Orange, including a U.S.-wide traveling art exhibit starting in fall 2005.

Sponsored by the Department of History, the discussion will start at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 20, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Campus Avenue.  The public is invited to attend free of charge

Leading the session will be Chris Beam, Trang Nguyen, Oliver Wolf and David Emery.

The current conflict in Iraq invites comparisons with the Vietnam War, says Beam.  “Numerous commentators on the Iraq war routinely refer to Vietnam to drive home their points, and the 2004 presidential candidates are engaged in a ‘battle of biographies’ over their respective military records during that divisive struggle,” Beam says.

A veteran of the Vietnam War and a native of Brunswick, Beam served in the Marine Corps from 1967 to 1970.  He is the Bates College archivist and a lecturer in history, who teaches a course on the Vietnam War.

Trang Nguyen is from Hanoi.  A Bates sophomore who plans to major in economics, she attended two years of high school in the United States and transferred to Bates from St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.

Oliver Wolf, a Bates junior, is a political science major with a double concentration in U.S. political processes and international studies. He is president of the Bates College Republicans and vice chair of the Maine College Republicans, in which he helped build statewide membership to 19 chapters with more than 1,300 members since September 2003. Originally from Pittsburgh, Wolf is currently an active volunteer with the Maine Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign.

David Emery represented Maine’s First Congressional District from 1975 to 1983, service that included a stint on the House Armed Services Committee. In June 1983 President Reagan appointed him deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a position he held until June 1988.  He is president and owner of Scientific Marketing, a public opinion consulting firm, and resides in Tenants Harbor with his wife, Carol, and son, Albert.

Each commentator will offer his or her perspectives on both conflicts. The panel will then invite the audience to participate in a general discussion.

Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran and former U.S. senator from Georgia, discusses veterans’ issues and the impact the Bush administration has had on American military veterans in a speech at 5:30 p.m. today in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, Bates College, Campus Avenue.

Cleland’s talk, sponsored by the Bates Democrats, is open to the public at no cost.

“We need to improve dramatically [Veterans Adminstration] healthcare for all of our veterans instead of cutting the requested VA budget by $6.5 billion as President Bush has done,” Cleland, an outspoken critic of Bush administration policies, told an audience in Atlanta last June.

Since 2002, Cleland has served on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a body examining the facts behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and charged with making recommendations to prevent future acts of terrorism.

Cleland is a distinguished adjunct professor at American University’s Washington Semester Program and serves there as a fellow in the Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies. A former senator from Georgia, he began his public service as an officer in the U.S. Army, volunteering for duty in Vietnam in 1967, where he served until a grenade attack in April 1968 cost him both legs and his right arm.

After recuperating from his injuries, Cleland was elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 1975, when he was 34 years old, President Carter appointed him administrator of the Veteran’s Administration, where he instituted the revolutionary “Vets Center program,” which for the first time offered psychological counseling as well as physical care to combat veterans.

Cleland was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, where he served as chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, and was a member of the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee. In the Senate, he earned enormous respect for his work in such areas as health care and education reform, bio-terrorism preparedness, homeland security and fiscal responsibility.

Cleland is the author of Strong at the Broken Places (Longstreet Press, 2000).