Jerry Starr has been commended as a Giraffe for risking his academic career to create a controversial program that gives high school and college students a full picture of the Vietnam War.

A sociology professor at West Virginia University, Starr discovered in 1982 that most high school history texts contained only the most cursory information about Vietnam, even though it was this country’s longest and most recent war. In his efforts to get educational, veterans’ and peace organizations interested in a text that fully explained the war, he hit one brick wall after another.

Nobody wanted to talk about this divisive, controversial, lost war. After a fruitless year, Starr stuck his neck out to produce the book himself. Working with veterans, teachers and activists, he created a modular textbook, The Lessons of the Vietnam War.

Today, schools and colleges all over the country use Starr’s book, include Cornell and Temple University. The Washington Post called it the nation’s “first comprehensive text” on the subject of Vietnam, and it has been praised by military experts and peace activists alike. Further evidence that Starr’s curriculum is gaining acceptance in mainstream education is evidenced by its being chosen for the US Department of Education’s Program Effectiveness Panel.

Starr discovered that students are hungry for information about the war. His curriculum brings the subject to life with role-plays and with visits from Vietnam veterans. Starr says the aims of the lessons are to improve students’ conflict resolution skills, especially in the area of international relations; to teach them how to make moral choices and to sensitize them to cultural differences.

Update: Starr founded the advocacy groups Pittsburgh Educational Television in 1996 and Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting in 1998, as well as the Coalition to Defend Educational Broadcasting in 1999. To create the diverse content he found lacking in public television, Starr in 2003 helped produce the documentary series, \"Homefront,\" which focused on the War in Iraq, media monopolies, the war on drugs, nuclear weapons, security vs. freedom in the war on terrorism, and on hate crimes. Starr served as a visiting professor of communications at the University of California at San Diego from 2004 to 2008, when he retired. He died in 2012.