Paul Hillmer

Paul Hillmer earned his BA in history from Concordia University, where he now teaches, and his MA and PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. His primary area of study was industrial revolution-era US history.

In getting to know his Hmong students, he learned they knew very little about the history of their people and the forces that led to their recruitment by the CIA, their participation in the "Secret War" in Laos, their escape from Laos after the victory of communist forces in 1975, and the circumstances that brought them from the refugee camps of Thailand to a new life in the West.

Hillmer established the Hmong Oral History Project to help his students study their history, interview elders in their family, and engage in intercultural and inter-generational dialog. He ultimately joined in, interviewing U.S. personnel who served in Laos and Thailand in military, intelligence-gathering, and humanitarian capacities and younger, more Americanized Hmong In 2006 he was awarded a History Channel "Save Our History" grant which he used to document Hmong migration to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.