Robert K. Brigham

Robert. K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, joined the Vassar faculty in 1994. He is a specialist on the history of US foreign policy, particularly the Vietnam War. Brigham is author or co-author of ten books, among them Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (PublicAffairs, 2018); Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (PublicAffairs, 2006); and Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (PublicAffairs, 1999), written with former secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight. Brigham’s latest book is This is a True War Story: My Improbable History with Vietnam (The University of Chicago Press, 2026).

Brigham has earned research fellowships from the Rockefeller, Mellon, Ford, and Smith Richardson foundations as well as the National Endowment for Humanities. In addition, Brigham has been Albert Shaw Endowed Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, Mellon Senior Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University (Clare College), visiting professor of international relations at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, summer seminar faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History (Fulbright) at University College Dublin. Brigham directed the Vassar-West Point Initiative for a decade and now serves as the Faculty Director of Vassar’s Institute for the Liberal Arts.

In 2019, the Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College presented Brigham with its Outstanding Faculty Award. He has won similar teaching awards from Southern Vermont College (1986–87), the University of Kentucky (1993), and Semester at Sea (2014). In 2023, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations selected Brigham for the Peter L. Hahn Distinguished Service Award.