Kent State presents forum on "The Viet Nam Project"

In an attempt to understand the roots of the Kent State University shootings, alumna Carol Wilder has spent decades studying the culture of Vietnam.

She will speak on "The Viet Nam Project" on May 3 at 9 a.m. at the KSU Student Center KIVA.

Fellow professor Thomas M. Grace, a survivor of the shootings, will join the discussion.

Stanley Wearden, dean of KSU's College of Communication and Information, will introduce Wilder and Grace.

Wilder was a graduate student at KSU at the time of the shootings. She spent the 2007-08 school year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and she established a media laboratory at Hanoi University.

Wilder established a six-station Mac lab and taught several media classes, including "Documentary Filmmaking for International Studies." Some of the short films stemming from her classes are available on YouTube, including "Floating Futures," "Long Bien Story," "Behind the Corn" and "Living on Rubbish."

"The Vietnam War, which is called the American War in Vietnam, was at the center of my generation's experience," Wilder said. "I think if we can understand how and why that war happened, and how it is viewed from the Vietnamese side as well, the U.S. wouldn't have to keep learning the same lessons."

Wilder said the Kent State tragedy can still teach an important lesson today:

"In a sort of schlocky 1980s docudrama about Kent State, two girls are overheard after the shooting, crying 'The guns were loaded, the guns were loaded - we didn't know the guns were loaded.' An African-American student in a dashiki walks by and says, 'The guns are always loaded.'"

Today, Wilder is a professor of media studies at The New School in New York, and she has an upcoming book called "Crossing the Street in Hanoi." (Excerpts are available at her website.)

Grace also has a book coming out soon called "Kent State and Historical Memory." He has taught at colleges in western New York and will begin a stint in Buffalo this fall at Eric Community College.

Grace said that being a survivor of the shootings did not affect him as much as some might think.

"I was an activist before the killings," he said. "I knew full well that military authorities killed protesters and had done so at least as far back as 1877, when many dozens of workers were shot to death during a national railroad strike.

"What was surprising to me was that the National Guard would open fire during the day, in full view of hundreds of witnesses, and with television cameras and still photographers documenting it all. Usually in such circumstances, these things happen either at night or without many witnesses," Grace added.

He said that he approaches lectures like this not as a shooting victim, but as a witness to "a terrible act of unpunished violence against unarmed civilians."

Grace said the most important lesson from May 4 is "that it is of vital necessity to stand up and speak out against the use of state terrorism. Millions of students and young people, and some workers, did just that and it shocked the entire system of American higher education."