Transitions

Pete Daniel

Daniel

Writing my last column as OAH president has been difficult, for although we have had a good year, many initiatives remain incomplete. The strategic plan is taking shape, the search for an executive director to replace retiring Lee Formwalt moves ahead, and we eagerly anticipate the convention in Seattle. Given the state of the national economy—automobile plants closing for months, the stock market sagging, foreclosures, bailouts—the OAH is holding its own. The economic collapse, federal intrusion to stabilize financial institutions, President Barack Obama’s economic initiatives, and the human suffering that has accompanied the recession, will provoke historical scholarship much as did the Great Depression and the New Deal.

While sources for the 1930s are primarily paper documents, photographs, and recordings, future historians will increasingly rely upon digital sources, which, as we have learned, can disappear. White House e-mails relating to fired attorneys were routed through e-mail campaign accounts and were lost, or at least have not been found. Even some paper records are endangered. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) won a preliminary injunction instructing Vice President Dick Cheney to preserve all official documents. The OAH was one of several associations and individuals who joined this lawsuit as plaintiffs. Such incidents underline the importance of President Obama’s appointment of the next Archivist of the Untied States to replace recently retired Allan Weinstein. The OAH, other learned societies, and the National Coalition for History are in the loop to ensure that the next archivist supports the interests of historians.

Executive Director Lee Formwalt will be retiring this summer after a decade of dedicated OAH leadership. Lee guided us through the Adam’s Mark/St. Louis and San Francisco/San Jose convention crises and has implemented a long list of programs. He has encouraged membership among public historians, K-12 teachers, and community college professors and worked tirelessly to raise funds for OAH initiatives. In addition to his more visible achievements, Lee has always been generous to me with information and insights into how the organization functions. I owe him a note of personal gratitude for guiding me during my term as president.

On Christmas Eve I had breakfast with my daughter, Lisa Carbaugh, at Southside, our favorite coffee shop in Lompoc, CA, where Lisa teaches eighth-grade English. Although she did not grow up in the digital world, she teaches kids who are immersed in it. She assigned her students an essay featuring a slave who escapes from a slave state and flees to Canada. Her students, Lisa discovered, were unsure of the location of slave and free states; one wrote of a slave escaping from Maine. They had studied the subject in history class, but maps in the history text did not sink in. What she needed, Lisa stressed, was a map such as John King used on CNN to explain political data on election night. Transforming King’s versatile political map into one programmed with geographical, historical, and literary data, she argued, would capture students’ attention more than a textbook map. We have to teach the students we have in the classroom, she observed, not those we might prefer. These students are texting, playing video games, watching TV, and are wired for the digital revolution. Whether in an eighth-grade classroom, a university seminar, a museum, a national park, an archive, or a federal history office in Washington, the digital revolution raises serious questions about our future as historians.

One of the major tasks that will face the incoming executive director is implementing the strategic plan, and clearly one of the most important parts of the plan deals with the way scholarship is produced and disseminated. Already the Journal of American History has created imaginative and significant web projects and podcasts. Treasurer Robert Griffith and I have explored some options for the OAH website with the staff of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I learned how little I know about the blizzard of new digital operations and also that many of these innovative ways of communicating have great potential for historians. When we discussed allowing members to have their own webpage on the OAH site, I admitted my ignorance of Facebook as a template. After a spirited discussion of the OAH’s potential to attract young members, encourage digital communities, and provide historical scholarship, I went home and joined Facebook. I was surprised at how many historians were there, plus a daughter and grandson. Like many of you, I have resisted abandoning the printed word, but many younger scholars abhor paper as much as we like it. The implications of this shift are enormous, and we cannot ignore the digital revolution that is sweeping across the globe. If there are members who have suggestions on how we make the transition to a more digital friendly website, please let me know at <petedaniel at oah.org>. A session at the convention will allow open discussion of all elements of the emerging strategic plan.

Finally, I want to thank over a hundred members who enthusiastically accepted when I asked them to serve on committees. Because of the constitutional change, I am the last president to make such appointments; a committee on committees now does the job. I cannot think of a person who declined, except when there were pressing obligations that made it impossible for them to serve. This commitment to service is one of the most important aspects of our OAH culture, and so long as we preserve this spirit we will remain strong.

I am looking forward to the convention in Seattle in late March. The program this year reflects the idea of history without boundaries and is inclusive of our membership. I plan to arrive early and stay late, and I hope to see you there.