The Contemporary History Institute hosts the 2025 Baker Peace Conference, themed ‘After Saigon’s Fall: The Postwar Decade (1975-1985)’, on February 20-21 in Walter Hall Rotunda.

The Baker Conference, a spring staple at Ohio University since the 1980s, returns with a keynote address by renowned Vietnam scholar Peter Zinoman on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 7:30pm. Zinoman is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as Chairman of the History Department.  He is the author of the Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 and Vietnamese Colonial Republican: The Political Vision of Vu Trong Phung. He is also the co-translator of Dumb Luck: A Novel by Vu Trong Phung and the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies. He is currently writing a book about northern Vietnamese anti-Stalinism during the 1950s.

The conference will also feature three panels of experts on the Vietnam War and the Southeast Asian region. The opening panel, on Thursday from 3pm-5pm, will examine the consequences of the Vietnam War for the nations of ‘Indochina’: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

There will be two additional panels on Friday the 21^st. The first, from 10am-12pm, will look at the role of the ‘Cold War Allies’, including the United States, the People's Republic of China, and the Soviet Union. The final panel, from 3pm-5pm, will then focus on the war’s after-effects on ‘Southeast Asian Neighbors’, and will feature experts on Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

The Baker Peace Conference is an annual event that brings together a diverse group of leading experts to discuss a significant national or international issue related to peace. The first Baker Peace Conference took place in 1988, six years after the late Dr. John C. Baker, the University's president from 1945-62, and his wife, Elizabeth, established the John and Elizabeth Baker Peace Studies Endowment to encourage the education of students and the general public in the means by which peace can be established and maintained throughout the world.

The Baker Conferences are jointly sponsored by the Contemporary History Institute and the Baker Peace Studies Program.

This event is free and open to the public. Coffee, light snacks and other refreshments will be available to attendees throughout both days of the conference.

2025 Baker Peace Conference schedule (all events in Walter Hall Rotunda):

Thursday February 20:

Panel 1: Indochina, 3pm-5pm

Ian Baird, Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

Sophal Ear, Associate Professor in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University

Alex-Thái Vo, Research Assistant Professor at the Vietnam Center & Archive at Texas Tech University

Tuong Vu, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon

Keynote Address: 7:30pm-9:00pm

Peter Zinoman, Professor of History and Chairman of the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley

Friday February 21:

Panel 2: Cold War Allies, 10am-12pm

Amanda Demmer, Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech

Xiao-Bing Li, Professor of History and Don Betz Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma

Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Ingo Trauschweizer, Professor of History at Ohio University

Panel 3: Southeast Asian Neighbors, 3pm-5pm

Mary Callahan, Associate Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington

Lisandro Claudio, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley

Thanh Nguyen Duc, Founding President at the Viet Nam Center for Economic and Strategic Studies

Arjun Subrahmanyan, Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian History at Murdoch University