Youth Excellence 2001 Keynote

Prof. Viet Dinh

Professor David Dinh

Fifteen years ago this Thanksgiving weekend a 10-year-old Vietnamese boy named Viet Dinh arrived in this country as a refugee. He was with his mother, four sisters and a brother. They had $200, which they spent on used winter coats.

They were boat people. They had left Vietnam on a small fishing boat, which lost its engine in a storm. They drifted for days until they made it to Malaysia -- swimming in at night to avoid patrol boats that had fired at them. After months in a refugee camp they were cleared for admission to the United States and flown to Portland, Ore.

Two members of the family were left behind in Vietnam: Viet Dinh's father, Phong Dinh, and his older sister Van Dinh, who was 20 then. She stayed behind to help their father.

Phong Dinh had been a city councilman in Vung Tau during the Saigon regime. When the Communists took over in 1975, he was sent to a re-education camp. He escaped from the camp on June 12, 1978, and was on the run when his wife and six children left.

Over the next five years Phong Dinh tried unsuccessfully 25 times to get out of Vietnam by boat. He paid boatmen who never turned up or who were arrested. Finally, in 1983, he made it to the Philippines, and then to the United States.

That left the oldest child, Van Dinh. She had helped her father pay the boatmen. But it was six years before she managed to leave herself: on a boat that reached Hong Kong in August 1989.

Van Dinh was kept in the locked Hong Kong camp for three years, waiting for clearance as a refugee. With her was her 5-year-old son, Quan, who had a congenital heart condition. That made her desperate to reach the United States, but for years she could not even get an interview with those in charge of the refugee process in Hong Kong.

At the end of 1991 Viet Dinh, then 23 years old, had written about his sister Van's plight in Hong Kong. It was published in the New York Times Op-Ed in January 1992.

After his Op-Ed piece was published, other papers picked up the story. The Hong Kong authorities, feeling the pressure, finally interviewed Van Dinh -- and found that she was entitled to refugee status. In September 1992 she made it to Portland. The family was reunited after 15 years.

Anthony Lewis, an editor of New York Times, on Viet Dinh's story , said, "It is an American story, and one that I wish members of Congress and their constituents who are fulminating these days about "the immigrant threat" would think about. The Dinh family is doing exactly what immigrants on the Lower East Side and so many other places did in past years: struggling for themselves and making this country better. There is no other country that has taken in so many people from so many places and cultures, and gained so much in the process. To turn away from that tradition now would do the United States great damage."

Professor Viet Dinh received his Ph. D from Harvard University Law School, 1993, and London School of Economics in 1988. Before being appointed to be Assistant Attorney General, Dr. Dinh was Associate Professor of Law with specialties in Constitutional Law; International Law and Economics. He also served as Deputy Director, Asian Law and Policy Studies Program, and Co-Director, Joint Program in Law and Business Administration (1998-99).

In the United States Senate, Dr. Dinh has served as Special Counsel to Sen. Pete V. Domenici on Impeachment Trial of the President of the United States; Associate Special Counsel on Special Committee to Investigate Whitewater Development Corporation and Related Matters.

The recognition section following the keynote speech, the-most-waited-for-moment for the honorees and their family, started with a very lively bilingual introduction of each student. The parents of each honoree were called upon to stand up to be recognized and applauded when their son/daughter were recognized and given awards.

Dr. Dinh also served in the United States Supreme Court as Law CLerk under the Hon. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In Washington DC, Dr. Dinh has also served as a Law Clerk in the United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit under Hon. Laurence H. Silberman.