Basil Hicks public lecture on Problems of War and Peace

This year's Basil Hicks public lecture on Problems of War and Peace will be delivered by Professor Beth Bailey (Kansas), who is currently Pitt Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge.

The lecture will take place on Thursday 23rd April 5.00 - 6.30pm in Diamond Lecture Theatre 7.

The Basil Hicks lecture series is funded by a bequest to our School commemorating an officer killed in the First World War. It has been given by prominent historians (e.g. Sir Ian Kershaw in 2015), but fell into abeyance with the pandemic. We are relaunching it this year, so please advertise it widely to your students, and to your academic and public networks.

TITLE: A War Within the War: The U.S. Army and the 'Problem of Race' in the Vietnam Era

ABSTRACT: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as American troops fought in Vietnam, racial conflict exploded within the U.S. Army—not only in Vietnam but on bases worldwide. This lecture examines how military leaders came to see this crisis as a threat to the Army’s ability to fight and win wars, and how they sought to solve it. In doing so, a deeply conservative institution adopted strikingly progressive reforms that reshaped the modern U.S. military.

BIO:
Beth Bailey is the 2025-26 Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge. She is the author or editor of thirteen books, including An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era; America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force; and the widely-used US history textbook, A People and a Nation.