Dartmouth Vietnam Project

Oral History Interview with Colin Blaydon

Colin Blaydon

Colin

Blaydon

Riley Collins

Professor Colin C. Blaydon. Oral history interview for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. Professor Blaydon describes growing up in Newport News, Virginia as the son of a Naval architect and engineer. Blaydon discusses his school experience, race relations, and segregation in Virginia during his childhood. Blaydon describes attending the United States Military Academy at West Point. He shares that West Point was a difficult experience and was able to transfer to University of Virginia as a member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). Blaydon discusses being commissioned in the Army Corps of Engineers after graduation, however, he attended Harvard University for graduate school and did not go into active duty until 1966 after he completed graduate school. He shares his experience at Harvard studying modern control theory and later received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He was commissioned by the Atomic Energy Commission for a nuclear technology fellowship. Blaydon shares how he was able to use his Ph.D. work while on active duty. He describes meeting Alain C. Enthoven after a class at Harvard and as a result of their conversation, Blaydon describes how he was assigned to Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara’s staff. He details his involvement with Army intelligence during the Vietnam War. Specifically his work with drone technology. He describes being sent to the strategic target operations center at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Professor Blaydon describes returning from Vietnam and working in academia. He worked at Harvard Business School as an Assistant Professor teaching quantitative analysis and finance. He discusses the climate on campus after the war and the difference between graduate and undergraduate student attitudes towards the Vietnam War. He details the events of the Kent State shooting and Harvard’s decision to suspend classes and remove the ROTC from campus. Blaydon describes his involvement with Vietnamese resettlement in the United States after the war. He discusses his career as the Dean of the Tuck School of Business and describes the Tuck School’s participation in establishing a business school for the Vietnam National University during the 1990s. He describes the kind reception of the American’s received in Vietnam during this time.

August 19, 2016

Dartmouth Faculty

Military Service

Military Service (Army)

Dartmouth History

Protest/Antiwar Activism

Political Participation

Civil/Government Service

Upper Valley Resident

English

DOH-518

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

//rcweb.dartmouth.edu/DDHI/histories/blaydon_colin/blaydon_colin.mp3

//rcweb.dartmouth.edu/DDHI/histories/blaydon_colin/blaydon_colin_transcript_final.pdf

//rcweb.dartmouth.edu/DDHI/histories/blaydon_colin/blaydon_colin_transcript_final.html