Nguyen Manh Tuong


Nguyễn Mạnh Tường was a Vietnamese lawyer and intellectual.
He was known to be one of the active participators in the Nhân Văn affair in the mid-1950s which saw many middle class intellectuals demanding freedom and democracy in communist-led North Vietnam. After he criticised the disastrous land reform campaign in 1956, he was stripped of all positions he held in the government and was forced to retire from practicing law.

Biography

Nguyễn Mạnh Tường was born in 1909 in the Hàng Đào street of Hà Nội. He graduated from the Lycée Albert Sarraut at age 16 and studied overseas at the University of Montpellier in southern France in 1927. At age 22, he became the first Vietnamese person to receive two doctorates in France: Juris Doctor and a Doctor d'État in Literature. According to the press of the time, a young Vietnamese person with two doctorates was unheard of in the French educational system. A good friend of his was Nguyễn Văn Huyên, who was working toward a Doctor of Letters in France.
Returning to Vietnam in 1936, Nguyễn Mạnh Tường taught French literature in Hanoi at the Lycée du Protectorat. Dissatisfied with prejudiced French policies, he left the school and opened a law firm.
While participating in the Vietnamese resistance against France, he worked as a lawyer and taught in Thanh Hóa until the Partition of Vietnam in 1954, when he moved back to Hanoi and became a professor at University of Literature.
After 1954, he became dean at the Hanoi University of Law, vice-chairman of the Vietnamese Lawyers Association ; chair of the Vietnam Law Group ; vice-dean at the Hanoi National University of Education ; member of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front; member of the Vietnam-France Friendship Society, Vietnamese-Soviet Friendship Society, and Committee for the Protection of World Peace ; founder of the Unity Club ; and vice-provost at Hanoi National University of Education; he also conducted education research. He joined the Vietnamese government delegation at diplomatic talks in Đà Lạt and other peace talks in Beijing and Vienna.