Higher Seminar in Statecraft and Strategic Communication | Leyla Belle Drake

Abstract: In 1967, a group of prominent intellectuals, artists, politicians, and activists from across the world came together to investigate the ongoing war in Vietnam. Modelled on the post-Second World War Nuremberg trial but with no official mandate, the Russell Tribunal – whose public sessions were held in Stockholm and Roskilde – appropriated the form and language of international law to document, judge, and dramatically publicize American actions in Vietnam. This dissertation focuses on the Russell Tribunal’s witnessing practices, arguing that the Tribunal established a form of “knowledge activism” in which public testimony from experts, on-site investigators, perpetrators, and victims were used as means of both knowledge production and political protest. Examining the role of witnessing in a time of revolutionary aspiration, the dissertation shows that Russell Tribunal witnesses not only responded to and shaped standards of testimony but contributed unique forms of antiwar knowledge and a new understanding of the Vietnam War. It argues that witness testimony was central to the Russell Tribunal’s efforts to gain legitimacy, and that the Tribunal as a whole helped make both Vietnamese suffering and American perpetration legible while providing useable counternarratives to the US government line.