From the OAH President

The Year Ahead: Challenges and Responsibilitites

James O. Horton

As I begin my presidential year I am impressed by many things about our organization. Our membership is at an all-time high, our recent wonderfully stimulating meeting in Boston was the second largest in our history, and despite a weak national economy, our budget is in balance. Much of this is due not only to our fellow members who worked so hard on committee assignments last year and to the steady guidance of Jacquelyn Hall, our former president, but also to the OAH staff in the Bloomington office, whose work is greatly appreciated by all those who understand that smooth and efficient meetings do not just happen. We owe all these people, our friends and colleagues, much gratitude for their dedicated service to our profession.

Our expanding membership of historians from the public sphere and the secondary schools has infused OAH with additional energy. They have widened our perspective on the opportunities that we have to teach—in our college and university classrooms and beyond—to a broader public sorely in need of a historical context for the significant responsibilities that they bear and the decisions that they are called upon to make as citizens in a democracy. Recent attempts at national conversations on major contemporary issues make clear the need for a more general understanding of our national history. With little historical knowledge to draw on, too often public debates intended to illuminate instead degenerate into polarizing soundbite exchanges. Given the dangerous and increasingly complex world we live in, the need for a solid grasp of the national and international historical context is critical for policymaking and analysis at all levels. This, of course, makes our responsibilities as keepers of the national memory important, complicated, and controversial. Now, perhaps more than ever, historians teaching in the academy and the public world need to come together and redouble their efforts to make sound solid historical research and analysis available to our society.

The OAH is already attempting to facilitate such an alliance, working with academic institutions and with the National Park Service, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, and other public history organizations. Many of these efforts have proved exceedingly valuable for all parties. The joint ventures of OAH and the National Park Service, for example, have introduced new historical ideas and interpretations into park service exhibition and presentation. They have also introduced many academic historians to the opportunities and difficulties of public history that park service historians know so well. In the process these alliances have dismantled many stereotypes that have worked in the past to discourage such cooperation. Some of our members have joined with the Teaching American History program of the U.S. Department of Education, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, The National Endowment for the Humanities, National History Day, and other groups to provide history seminars for precollegiate teachers, National Park Service historians, and others. For those of us who have participated, it has been a very rewarding experience in which we learn as much as we teach.

With these and other partnerships, OAH has been able to provide new opportunities for our members to enjoy a wide range of teaching experiences, but there is much more to be done. Most of us became historians because at some point in our education we realized how fascinating and enjoyable we found historical research and teaching. In this context, history provides more than an interesting window on the past. It is the foundation upon which sound contemporary decision making should be based. Here, historians can play their most important role. We have an obligation to do all we can to provide historical information to the American public, and since facts almost never speak for themselves, we must also bring our expertise to bear on their interpretation. If professional historians do not agree on the “facts” of history, or their interpretation—and we almost never do—we still have the responsibility to introduce the public to the important debates that animate our profession. We should let them know that such conversations go on among us and help them understand the rules by which they proceed.

After even a casual discussion with those outside our profession who are interested in history—and there are more of them than many of us realize—it is clear that most citizens have an appalling ignorance not only of the substance of American history, but also of the methods and resources historians use to practice their craft. Historical research is engrossing—even addictive. That helps to explain our students’ fascination with primary sources and why these sources are so successful as teaching tools. Yet, to most Americans, historical research and analysis is something of a mystery. Our conclusions might be more widely understood if our research methods, our standards for judging historical evidence, and our use of that evidence in forming an argument were more widely understood. We may not all accept the same conclusions, but surely there are basic rules of evidence and debate that most of us can agree on and that might be important for the public to understand. There are times when we tell ourselves that the public is not interested in us or our profession. I think we sell ourselves short. My experience in public history persuades me to the contrary. The popularity of genealogy, the upsurge in historical reenactment, and the growing number of Civil War roundtable groups in the North as well as in the South, make this abundantly clear. A great many people in the general public find history fascinating, and they would be even more engaged if they understood how we do our work. This is a critical moment for us to help them understand, for there is a kind of commercial mass production of history underway that sorely needs our attention.

American business has become convinced that “history sells.” It sells in movies, at historical sites, in museums, and in history theme parks. Boston, Philadelphia, and many other large cities have known this for generations, and the expanding industry of “heritage tourism” is moving into medium and smaller communities alike to spread the message. There are hundreds of historians in these public settings struggling to see that the presentation of history presented in these venues benefits from the latest research and most up-to-date interpretations of recently available resources. Theirs is no easy job, for visitors’ expectations often conflict with the most recent historical research. Without the benefits of tenure or a tradition of academic freedom, these public historians practice history without a net. They are much more vulnerable to the direct effects of political, social, and economic pressures than most of us in the academy.

As we proceed, we must also not lose sight of the challenges that all of us face, inside as well as outside the academy. By now many of you are aware that the OAH Executive Board has agreed to establish an ad hoc committee to investigate reports that some of our colleagues are facing serious limitations on their freedom to teach in their classrooms, that their research is being hampered by increasing restrictions on government records, and—that under the U.S. Patriot Act—their library selections are subject to monitoring. This is especially true for students and faculty teaching in community colleges and public schools, although academic freedom has suffered at all levels since the implementation of new governmental security policies in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The aim of the OAH ad hoc committee is to gather information and report that information to the executive board and to the membership. As historians, we recognize the importance of having access to information upon which to base our analyses. We cannot do our jobs, we cannot fulfill our public and civic responsibilities, if our access to historical data is limited or our freedom to discuss ideas is curtailed. Our contemporary situation demands the same thoughtful critique that we bring to our historical analysis, and contemporary decisions are not likely to be rational if made without a historical context.

We are not alone in the effort to gather information. The American Historical Association and the American Studies Association have expressed similar concerns and have taken similar action. Meanwhile, recent efforts to appoint a new Archivist of the United States are of particular significance to all of us. We must remind the public of the importance of our documentary heritage. Those of us who depend on the information contained in the documents at the National Archives for our work, should strongly urge the U.S. Senate to secure the advice of professional historians and archivists as they go about the selection of the next U.S. Archivist.

I look forward to a challenging year as your president. Most of all, I look forward to our continuing discussion of these matters. Such debate cannot help but to enhance our research, our teaching, and the quality of our message to the American public and the wider world.