Colonized by China for a millennium, by France for a century, and at war with the United States for two decades, Vietnam tends to evoke ideas of oppression and destruction for many, especially those in the West. However, Vietnam has been a crossroads of empires—as well as a colonizing empire in itself—and therefore it has been a site of rich cross-cultural intellectual engagement. In this book-launch, Kevin Pham presents his new book, The Architects of Dignity, and will be joined by Yen Vu, a professor at Fulbright University Vietnam. They will talk about the intergenerational debate Pham researches in his book, about competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination, what the Vietnamese should do with their traditions given the influx of political and social ideas from the West, and how they should harness feelings of national shame to construct national dignity.