A Conversation with Marc Selverstone
November 22, 2024 | 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
| $75Event Navigation
Join The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza for an exclusive lunch and learn experience on Friday, November 22 (61st anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy) with presidential historian Marc Selverstone in conversation with fellow presidential scholar Jeffrey Engel as they discuss Selverstone’s book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam.
In October 1963, the United States publicly proposed the removal of American troops from Vietnam, earning President John F. Kennedy an enduring reputation as a skeptic on the war. In fact, Kennedy was ambivalent about withdrawal and was largely detached from its planning. Its details were the handiwork of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who turned a loosely defined presidential aspiration into a systemic program for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Its announcement in October 1963 ultimately served Kennedy’s political needs, allowing him to limit American involvement while preserving the U.S. commitment to South Vietnam.
Program tickets include a copy of the book and a light lunch reception. Book signing to follow the program. Tickets do not include Museum admission.
Museum members receive discounted ticket pricing. Contact membership@jfk.org to learn more.
About Marc Selverstone
Marc J. Selverstone is Professor and Director of Presidential Studies and Co-Chair of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. He is the author of The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard, 2022) and Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard, 2009), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He is also the editor of A Companion to John F. Kennedy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition (Virginia, 2014–), and co-editor of the Miller Center “Studies on the Presidency” series with the University of Virginia Press.
About Jeffrey A. Engel
Jeffrey A. Engel is the David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.