Professor Carpenter Speaks at Roundtable on Afghanistan

Human Security Lab Director Professor Charli Carpenter spoke at a virtual panel discussion on Tuesday on the parallels of US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Vietnam.

The event was sponsored by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College of the Humanities & Fine Arts and the College of Social and Behavioral Science and was moderated by Dean Barbara Krauthamer. Carpenter was joined by Christian Appy, a history professor at UMass Amherst, and Charlie Sennott of The GroundTruth Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to restoring journalism by supporting field reporting on under-covered parts of the world.

The roundtable discussed the parallels and lessons learned from Vietnam as well as the humanitarian implications of withdrawal. Carpenter’s remarks included humanitarian evacuation, the rights of women and gender minorities, roads not taken in effective peacebuilding in Afghanistan, and standards for evaluating US interventions. A recording of the event will be available on the UMass website.