Background

To gain an understanding of the conflict between students, faculty, and administration at Brooklyn Polytechnic over the Vietnam War, one must first gain an understanding of the Vietnam War itself.

After World War Two, various factors lead to Vietnam being split into North and South factions. North Vietnam, initially an insurgency, became allied with the Soviet Union, while the South was allied with the French, then the United States. Around this time, United States foreign policy adopted the "domino theory": that if one country falls under Soviet influence, all adjacent countries will in turn fall under Soviet influence. In 1954, after the decisive North Vietnamese victory against the French at Dien Bien Phu, which established North Vietnam as a bonafide threat the South, the United States began to send indirect military assistance and monetary aid to Vietnam (Spector).

On August 2, 1964, the U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer on an intelligence gathering and reconaissance mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam, was reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats (Paterson). It should be noted that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara played-up and distorted evidence to Congress to make it seem that the Maddox was attacked multiple times (Paterson). This incdient was the precipice for direct U.S. involvment in Vietnam, as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10 (Paterson). This gave Johnson carte blanche to carry out direct military action in Vietnam.

U.S. forces were met with stiff restistance from the North Vietnamese. The Pentagon largely operated under the doctrine that they were fighting a conventional war; while the North Vietnamese adopted unconvential and Guerrilla tactics to slowly wear down their opponent. This was used to great affect: optimistic U.S. miltary plans and timelines were thrown out the window, as they shifted strategies to a more slow and ardous war of attrition against the North Vietnamese.  U.S. causaulties in Vietnam were already in the tens of thousands when in 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that the U.S. had begun military operations in Cambodia (Interference Archive). These operations were carried out in effort to disable the Ho Chi Minh trail: a route used to resupply Vietcong guerrillas in the south. This sparked widespread protests and strikes across the country, with one of the largest being scheduled for May 4th. On this day at Kent State University, the National Guard opened fire on students, "killing four students and wounding nine" (Interefernce Archive). In response to this event, known as the Kent State Massacre, civil unrest at college campuses across the country proliferated unprecedently.

It is in this setting that internal conflict between students, faculty, and administration at Poly erupted.