The Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group (commonly known as the Michigan State University Group and abbreviated MSUG) was a program of technical assistance provided to the government of South Vietnam as an effort in state-building by the US Department of State.
From 1955 to 1962, under contract to the International Cooperation Administration in Washington and the Vietnamese government in Saigon, faculty and staff from Michigan State University consulted for agencies of the Ngô Đình Diệm regime. The group advised and trained Vietnamese personnel in the disciplines of public administration, police administration, and economics. MSUG worked autonomously from most US government agencies, had unmatched access to the presidency, and even assisted in writing the country's new constitution. Several of its proposals were undertaken by the Vietnamese government and had positive results for the people of Vietnam. However, the group had limited influence on Diệm's decision-making and on the course of events in Vietnam, and publications by dissatisfied faculty led to Diệm's termination of the contract.
When implications later arose that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated MSUG as a front for its covert operations, the technical assistance program became a cause célèbre in the early years of the antiwar movement.
Project instigation and inception
During his self-imposed exile in the early 1950s, Ngô Đình Diệm met and befriended Wesley R. Fishel, a former military language specialist with a doctorate in international relations from the University of Chicago. Fishel was "impressed [by] Diệm's anticommunist and sociopolitical reform views, and the two men corresponded frequently". When Fishel was hired in 1951 as an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University, he invited Diệm to join him. Two years later, as assistant director of the university's Governmental Research Bureau, Fishel appointed Diệm as the bureau's Southeast Asian consultant.
The result was symbiotic: Diệm's visit to the United States enabled him to build up the political support he needed to be installed as the prime minister of South Vietnam in July 1954; in turn Fishel became one of Diệm's closest advisors and confidants. At Fishel's suggestion, and already well aware of MSU's capabilities, Diệm requested that part of his aid package from the U.S. International Cooperation Administration include a "technical assistance" contract with Michigan State. MSU was thereby asked to use its expertise to help stabilize Vietnam's economy, improve the government bureaucracy, and control an ongoing communist insurgency.
Michigan State, the pioneer land-grant university, had since its founding believed in turning theory into praxis; for example, its agricultural extension service made the results of its research available to farmers throughout Michigan for their practical use. Because of this emphasis on practical education and community involvement, the school justifiably claimed that "the state is our campus". University President John A. Hannah in particular was a major proponent of the so-called service-oriented institution; to him, it was a logical next step to expand that role internationally, and declare without intended hyperbole that "the world is our campus".
When the request for assistance came through U.S. government channels, the staunchly anticommunist Hannah was deeply interested in pursuing the contract. He sent a small evaluation contingent to Vietnam, consisting of three department chairmen that would be involved—Edward W. Weidner (political science), Arthur F. Brandstatter (police administration), and Charles C. Killingsworth (economics)—along with James H. Dennison, head of university public relations and Hannah's administrative assistant. After a brief, two-week visit, the quartet reported in October 1954 that a state of emergency existed in Vietnam, and recommended that the project should be immediately undertaken. The report stated that although the short preparation time could lead to mistakes, it was "important... to get a program under way that ha[d] at least a reasonable chance of success". Hannah approved the contract, forming the Michigan State University Group, which would operate under the authority of the U.S. Embassy's United States Operations Mission (USOM). Hannah also confirmed Weidner's recommendation that Fishel be appointed project head, a position Fishel held from the start of the project until early 1958.