Trust
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 Berlin |
History is much in the news of late, and the news has rarely been good. The parade of scholars who have lied and cheated has made our profession look not much better than the stock manipulators and corporate plunderers of Wall Street. While scholarly malfeasance has not yet landed anyone in jail--even of the country club sort--the effect of our own Enron has been equally disastrous. Trust is the foundation of our profession. While some books, because of the nature of their subject, may have their bibliographies vetted and their footnotes checked, few in fact undergo such rigorous examination. With a few notable exceptions, the most prestigious presses have abdicated their responsibility to check sources. Some do little more than set type, stamp their encephalon, and distribute the end product of our work. But even the most exacting editorial process cannot detect some kinds of fraud, for many works draw on archives scattered across the globe and far out of the reach of the most vigilant editor. Without trust, our work has no legitimacy. While some solace may be gained from the fact that post-publication scholarly review and debate have unmasked the liars, thieves, and the charlatans, the stain remains. The disgrace that has tarnished historical scholarship could not have come at a worse moment. War makes perilous times and places history in special danger by seeming to promote self-congratulatory interpretations of the past that ignore complexity, deny conflict, and celebrate the status quo. It is perhaps not surprising that the impending war with Iraq and the ongoing war against terror have evoked new concerns about the nation's history from American leaders at the highest level. Last September, in a Rose Garden speech, President George W. Bush--surrounded by the Archivist of the United States, the Chairman of the National Endowment of Humanities, the Secretary of Education, and other notables--called for a new renewal of the study of history. "When children are given the real history of America, they will also learn to love America." Following the president's lead, the National Archives mounted "Our Documents" on its web site, making available the "100 milestone documents" from its vast collection. The National Endowment for the Humanities initiated its "We the People" program, consisting of an essay contest for high school juniors. The winners would be announced at the NEH-sponsored lecture on "Heroes of History," which will be delivered by "a noted scholar." The White House would sponsor a conference on teaching history. Although these initiatives to explore "the real history of America" to "learn to love America" invite cynicism, they also offer opportunities for historians to play their own historic role as democracy's defenders by insisting upon the plural, contested nature of the past. Indeed, the President's new interest in history joins that of a chorus of concerned scholars and citizens, many of them historians, who have linked the decline of civic engagement necessary to sustain a democracy to a dismal knowledge of the nation's past. Students of American history have good reason to be wary of the sudden political importance given their discipline. Our job remains the critical examination of the past, and we teach critical thinking, not the commemoration of a nation. Yet, the president has offered an opportunity that should be seized. Who can condemn the National Archives for making available its Documentary 100, and who cannot celebrate a White House forum on the teaching of history? I--along with the other historians who sit on NEH's Council--have supported Chairman Bruce Cole's "We the People" initiative. While the emphasis on heroes may suggest simplistic jingoism, it also presents the possibility of debate, asking the question: whose heroes, and hence, whose history? Finding that Trent Lott may have a different hero than Charles Rangel opens the door to an understanding that history is not simply about the past but about how we think about the past. It returns us to another--and more promising--section of the president's Rose Garden speech where he noted that "Our history is not a story of perfection. It's a story of an imperfect people working toward great ideals." Inspecting those great ideals--the irony of their origins in the hand of the slaveholder, the imperfections of their implementation over two plus centuries, and the persistence and near universality of their appeal--offers an opportunity both to revitalize the study of American history and American democracy and to renew the trust between the history and the people that is essential to both. q Ira Berlin is professor of history at the University of Maryland in College Park. |
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