The Russell Tribunal and “the responsibility of intellectuals” in the Vietnam era

The 1967 International War Crimes Tribunal, also known as the Russell Tribunal, brought together an international and interdisciplinary array of scholars in a collaborative effort to uncover and publicize American war crimes in Vietnam. Although the tribunal is usually regarded as either a legal body or a propaganda initiative by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam government and its sympathizers, this article situates it in relation to the politics of knowledge in the 1960s. Using the records of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, which organized the tribunal, this article reveals that participants were motivated by a sense of scholarly responsibility and by a concern that militarism threatened the enterprise of scholarship itself. In contrast to institutions of knowledge production, such as the research university, that had, in their view, become subservient to the military-industrial complex, they envisioned the tribunal as a scholarly counterinstitution that would embody the values of cooperation, free inquiry, and autonomy. Proceeding from this premise, the article examines the process by which the tribunal gathered information, the various roles of different participants in that process, and the impact of its research on subsequent efforts to produce dissident knowledge. It concludes by considering the contemporary relevance of the tribunal.