Brian Washam

Brian Washam II is a PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi whose research focuses on the Vietnam War and studies under the guidance of Dr. Andrew Wiest, founding director of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society. Brian intends to write a dissertation that examines the return of American prisoners of war held during the Vietnam War to the United States through Operation Homecoming and how their experiences of resistance against the North Vietnamese and rhetoric of patriotism and sacrifice was used by President Richard Nixon to shift the focus of the American people off of the unpopularity of the conflict and the controversies of his presidency onto the heroic return of these POWs who, in Nixon’s words, enabled the United States to achieve “peace with honor.”