The Cornell connection: sound the all-clear, please | Bangkok Post: news

At first glance, Cornell University is about as far away from Thailand as imaginable, given its commanding location on the crest of a wind-swept hill overlooking the rocky Ice Age contours of Ithaca, New York, surrounded by precipitous gorges, dairy farms, ancient forests, apple orchards, spectacular waterfalls and expansive lawns of grass.

But the university has a great many links to Thailand, both intellectual and personal, historical and in the present. Thus it did not go unnoticed in Ithaca when the university was recently characterised as a tool of the US government in the intemperate clime of Thai cyberspace.

Every student has a different experience, but Cornell is where I learned to analyse, criticise and monitor the wrongdoings of the US government, not reflexively support and cheer it. My years as an undergraduate in the mid-'70s coincided with the end of the Vietnam War _ America's inglorious exit from Saigon was celebrated with a block party in Collegetown. But less well-known to Americans were some parallel Cold War upheavals in Thailand.