About Dr. Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Ph.D.
I went to war with my generation,
but instead of a rifle I took a typewriter and a camera. Then I joined the battlefields of Southeast Asia." - Dr.
Jane Hamilton-Merritt
Dr. Jane Hamilton-Merritt, journalist, photographer, war-correspondent, historian,
human rights advocate, expert on Southeast Asia, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 and again in 2000 for her work
on behalf of the Hmong tribal people of Laos.
Her most recent book Tragic Mountains:
The Hmong, The Americans, and The Secret Wars for Laos 1942-1992 (Indiana University Press) was published to
acclaim and selected as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History. It is now in available in paperback.
In 1999, she was elected to the Connecticut
Women’s Hall of Fame and inducted into the Explorer’s Club. She has testified numerous times before the
U.S. Congress on chemical-biological warfare, genocide, refugee issues, and human rights violations by Asian governments.
During the early 1980s, she worked as an Expert Consultant on Highland Lao Refugees to the U.S. State Department.
As an expert on Southeast Asia, Dr. Hamilton-Merritt has lectured extensively in secondary schools and
universities throughout the country on Asian peoples and their cultures and on the Vietnam War Era. At a Connecticut university,
she created and taught a course of the Vietnam War Era for both undergraduates and graduates.
In 1969, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Vietnam
War and the winner of the Inland Daily Press Associations Grand Prize Trophy for her frontline combat photography in Vietnam.
She is the author of six books and hundreds of articles. She has written for the Washington
Post, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Dayton Daily News, Bangkok Post, Reader’s Digest,
Saturday Review, Vietnam Magazine, VVA Veteran, Stars and Stripes, Freedom Review, American Spectator, and Asian Fortune.
She has appeared on numerous television specials, including an hour feature on Japanese national television.
Other honors include: Yale-Mellon Visiting Faculty Fellow at Yale University, Outstanding Woman of Connecticut given by the
U.N., Faculty Scholar Award at Southern Connecticut State University, Outstanding Alumnae at Ball State University, and numerous
honors and awards given to her by the Hmong and Lao refugee communities in the U.S.
Currently
she is at work on her next book and is co-editor of the Vietnam War Era Classics Series at Indiana University Press.
The first three books in this series are The Stones Cry Out (Cambodia), In the Jaws of History (Vietnam), and To Bear Any
Burden (interviews with Vietnam War participants from all sides and all points of view.)
Books/Articles Written by Dr. Jane Hamilton-Merritt:
A Meditator's Diary
Boonemee and the Lucky White Elephant
Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, The Americans, and The Secret
Wars for Laos 1942-1992
