The woman who brought Vietnam to an American university

At the age of five months, Hang and her family left Saigon just before the country’s reunification in 1975 because her father used to work for the South Vietnamese government. The whole family of 9 children of Hang’s parents spent a long time living in refugee camps in Guam and Hawaii (USA) before settling down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Growing up in a new land, Hang often heard from her family about the legacy of the war and the lost relatives in Vietnam. In 1954, Hang’s paternal family moved from Hai Duong to the South, while her maternal side in Quang Binh were those who devoted their lives to the revolution.

Hang said, Vietnamese people in Philadelphia are often hated because they remind Americans of their painful past. She was repeatedly asked why the Americans lost the war, but as a child who left Vietnam too soon, she could not find a satisfactory answer. At that time, even though she was a student, she asked herself questions and began to study related documents.

At university and graduate school, Vietnamese female students focus on researching Vietnam during the Cold War, a very dark period in the history of Vietnam-US relations. In particular, her time at the school coincided with the beginning of the reconciliation process between the US and Vietnam, in the early 1990s, what she describes as an “interesting combination”.

“The more I learn, the more I love Vietnam, where I was born,” said Ms. Nguyen Thi Lien Hang.

Witnessing the reconciliation between the two countries, she felt that it was still urgent to build a bridge to create mutual understanding between the overseas Vietnamese community and the people in the country. This idea of ​​hers received strong support from her father, who is very happy with what she has been doing with her career.

In 1994, at the age of 19, Hang first returned to Vietnam. Four years later, she spent another year in research. Since then, she has tried to arrange to return to Vietnam once a year, while focusing on writing about a bright and peaceful future between the two countries and how to put aside the painful past.

“I want to dedicate my life to building a stronger bridge between the Vietnamese community in the US and Vietnam,” Hang said.

With that motivation, Lien Hang, then an associate professor of American and East Asian history at Columbia University (New York), sought to establish a Vietnamese study program at the school. In 2017, she and John Phan, assistant professor of East Asian Language and Culture Department, started with two majors: social sciences – humanities and Vietnamese culture.

A year later, they added a teacher for the Vietnamese program and chose Chung Nguyen from Hanoi and assistant professor Nguyen Quoc Vinh as partners.

The group created a two-part program: a four-level Vietnamese language course led by Chung Nguyen and a main program with Vietnamese civilization, history, culture, and East Asian languages ​​taught by Ms. John Phan is in charge.

The two are in charge of teaching from undergraduate to doctoral levels. Undergraduate, graduate and graduate students from Columbia University’s law, business and medical schools and Barnard College also take Vietnamese language courses. The Vietnamese study industry quickly attracted hundreds of students, many of whom were Vietnamese American or non-Vietnamese interested.

Ms. Chung said the number of students in Vietnamese courses increased from 10 students in 2018 to 30 students. The group plans to organize summer foreign language programs in Vietnam so that students can come to learn and experience the country’s culture. In particular, these courses help increase the number of people enrolling in Vietnamese language courses at Columbia.

For decades, Americans made movies about the Vietnam War. “But today they pay more attention to the expansion of relations between the two countries in many fields, about Vietnam’s position in Southeast Asia and in the international arena. Notably, young people in the US think that a stronger relationship between the US and Vietnam could be an engine for growth in Asia,” she said.

In fact, many Vietnamese Americans are famous in different fields. The associate professor believes that Vietnam is gradually getting rid of the shadow of past wars and has a development path similar to its neighbors in Asia, such as Singapore, South Korea and Japan. In this journey, Ms. Hang wants to help promote understanding between peoples in the US and Vietnam through education.

Besides, Vietnam’s achievements in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic have attracted many students. They want to visit Vietnam to explore culture, cuisine and entertainment. “V-pop can become a trend among American youth like K-Pop,” she said.

With the recent developments in bilateral relations, she believes that the two peoples clearly understand the common values ​​and are concerned about the future.

This summer, Ms. Hang’s team will return to Vietnam to sign with partners including the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City and the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

“I think Vietnam needs to continue to perform better on a global scale to attract the attention of larger communities,” the associate professor expressed his expectation.

Vietnamese-English