As the Madison School Board was meeting Monday night to confirm its decision to name a new elementary school for Gen. Vang Pao, reports were coming in that the Hmong general had been indicted and arrested by federal authorities as the alleged mastermind of a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos.
The irony was not lost on Alfred McCoy, the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McCoy had been fiercely criticized by supporters of the school-naming proposal, including members of the School Board, for loudly challenging the notion that Vang Pao should be honored.