Adam Wagner
Adam’s research detailed the work of a government-sponsored technical assistance project that sought to improve the police and securities capabilities in South Vietnam before major U.S. involvement. To shed light on a neglected chapter in MSU history, he closely examined the MSU Vietnam Advisory Group that trained Vietnamese Police in the late 1950s. This was particularly interesting, because Michigan State was the only university in American history that has ever trained the domestic security forces of a foreign nation.
Most of Adam’s research was done at MSU’s Archives and Library. He sifted through boxes of documents published by the MSUG Police Division in the 1950s and found original, previously unviewed, color films detailing the operations of the police groups’ training activities. “It was exciting to find them and even more exciting to watch them on an old projector. It made the subject matter feel very real.” Adam wants to further examine the connections between domestic and international security through his research. His future project will look at other cases in which countries tried to establish domestic order.
