Professor Robert K. Brigham, Ph.D.

Robert K. Brigham, Ph.D., is the Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations at Vassar College where he has been a faculty member since 1994. He specializes in the history of U.S. foreign policy with particular emphasis on the Vietnam War. Prof. Brigham has won several teaching awards and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of ten books on the Vietnam War, including  Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (2018); Iraq, Vietnam, and the Limits of American Power (2008); and Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (1999), which he co-wrote with both famed Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and then-Brown University’s James Blight. The book, Argument Without End, served as the backdrop for Errol Morris’s Academy Award-winning 2003 documentary, The Fog of War. Since 1989, Prof. Brigham has made more than 100 trips to Vietnam to conduct research on the War. He  has lectured at many leading institutions, including Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Praise for Professor Robert Brigham

 “Bob Brigham is one our nation’s finest scholars on US foreign policy and the American war in Vietnam. His scholarly works on the military, diplomatic, and policy aspects of the Vietnam War are indispensable for understanding a Cold War conflict that continues to resonate today. Few, if any, historians and teachers are better suited than Brigham to explain one of the twentieth century’s most complex, and significant, historical events.”
– Gregory A. Daddis, Professor at Chapman University

“Professor Robert Brigham is a nationally recognized scholar and educator known for his work on the Vietnam War.  His most recent book on Kissinger is a remarkable accomplishment that does much to correct the historical record on the Nixon administration and its handling of the war.  Brigham has made and continues to make a major contribution to our understanding of a conflict that almost tore this country apart.”
–  Professor Emeritus of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

“Professor Robert Brigham is the leading expert on the history of the Vietnam War. As a scholar who has carried out research on all sides of the conflict, Professor Brigham is in the unique position to give us a comprehensive view of that tragic conflict.”
– Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Dorothy Borg Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia, Columbia University