Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Jill Lepore 20240712

You today by your television profess provideer. And now on book tv we are live with author and Harvard University history professor jill lepore who over the next 2 hours will be taking your calls and comments. Professors book include secret history of wonder woman, these truths, history of the United States and the newly published if then, about the cold war origins of data mining and social manipulation. Harvard professor jill lapore, before we get into the substance of your book, as a historian, what is your contemporary view of how our world is going to be viewed . [laughter] guest i think we have so little perspective on this moment that it is quite impossible to say. I think the perception that many people in the United States and, of course, also around the world have that this is an extraordinary uni shall time is something that we are in a time out of time will be a curiosity in the future. People will look back and wonder about that very sense alienation. I think that would be studied. Host when you think about it today, do you compare it to any moment in history . Guest no. As a historian im interested in the knowledge. I think we we have a cognitive tendency to enjoy analogies, to find one thing to be like another all of the time just in the same way im the kind of person that sees likens in family members, that looks like great grandma and i recognize that a lot of that is is, you know, my misperception, my need for familiarity. I think that there has been for most of my career as historian, the question that they is what time is it like, i understand where it comes from. Its an easy story to write. This reminds me of fdr. A whole prop of president ial biographers who go out on talk shows and offer up those analogies. I generally find them to be not especially useful and i certainly think in this era its actually a way to contain the chaos that isnt helpful because its a way to avoid confronting what is truly strange about the moment in time. Host two years ago when a talk you gave about the book, these truths, what do we mean when we talk about American History, how are we to reckon with the fact that our present day is so polarized that we believe that the past is two different paths, we cant even imagine sharing common ancestry as people and that seems to me as perilous state of affairs. Guest i still standby that statement. If anything, the past doesnt change but the perception is more and more divided and more bipartisan passion, real passion. Thats been obvious to me as a historian for a long time. Maybe recent conversation about monuments, whether confederate monuments should stand. Those points have been going on for a very long time but they havent occupied the attention of the media and of broad swath of the public, just the last year. We can think about other controversies in the past, you know, the history wars of 1990s or moments in 1910s and 20s over public fight over history of history of a particular era. Im sorry, go ahead. Host no, go ahead, finish. Guest i think that we have a kind of daily sense now that, you know, remember the crazy, goofy internet meme about the blue dress and some people saw it as blue and some people saw it as gold. I never looked at it. Thats the world that we live now. Every piece of information that is available can be seen. Blue dress or gold dress. Thats a fractured lens that is now the spectacles and becomes really deeply fascinated by things that happened in old times and im interested in how it got here and how people struggled in the past and what we can learn from frankly on from face of suffering which is really most of the story of humanity. I think its really distressing that people looked in the past simply as like folder that you can open up and find position papers. Host i was close with this, i think its pertinent now in these truths, you write that the american experiment has not ended, a nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. Guest yeah. In the course of this conversation you are likely to throw something at me that i changed my mind. I change my mind all of the time. Thats just the truth. A nation is human creation, bees live in hives, cows live in herds, those are national communities. Humans dont naturally live in nations. Its a things that humans have invented as category that in our era has been proven external because the liberal nation state is the only Human Institution that can guaranty rights to people and the United States is a particular place in the history of the rise of the liberal nation state and organization of a government through the consent of the people that can actually deliver to the people goods and services and the guaranty of rights. And so nations are really, really important and to say they are doesnt mean that theres something trivial. Nation is fundamentally unstable thing. In some ways, especially the United States which is a nation based on idea and not on the shared heritage and really not on a shared history or not shared language or shared religion, based on an idea. People dont believe on the idea and the nation will cease to exist. The daily anguish of people wondering whats going to happen in the United States. Looking from the country of abroad, do people not believe in the idea anymore. Thats the perilous state of that chaos. Host professor jill lapore, at what point did you say to yourself, yeah, i think i want to write a history of the United States in 800some page . Guest ive been asked to write like u. S. History textbooks throughout my career, you know, viewers may know that most college and High School Textbooks are jointlyily by jointly by team of scholars. Twentieth century, 19 century political historian and takes a group of scholars to cover the whole story of the United States. Ive never been attract today that as a project. I like to work prerogatively but the textbook as genre has a particular tone that is extremely unappeal to go me as a writer. I would write anything. A few years ago i was asked to write history of the United States. [laughter] guest i think theres actually a need for history of the United States, not for students but thats just for the public as a whole. There used to be these books, at a certain point in american historians career he this was always men would write the nations past as Public Service and, you know, none of them are the last of their kind. They are meant to offer up in this moment in time this is how this historian sees this story and that tradition had fallen away and then really quite repudiated and hasnt been a book like my history of the United States for quite a long time. I thought it seemed to me Something Like a dare. I dare for la tradition and just do this. I worked with another publisher that i hugely admired and they let me write the book that offered the account that i thought needed to be written that reflected my decades of teaching American History and writing essays about American History and books about American History. So, yeah, so i said, okay, i will do it. My for me it was important that i write it quickly. I get bored with books pretty fast. I had this idea and, you know, viewers who have read the book can respond. The idea that if i wrote it fast it would read fast like headlong momentum to it. So i took on the project with very much the idea that i would spend x number of months on the project and no more and id move on. I think if it had been where you write history of the United States in a thousands of pages, you could spend 10 years on that. Ive never have done that. That would have taken me host do you start chronologically when you start a project like that . Guest yeah, i made an outline. The book is chronological. Its not a chronical. It is history. It makes the argument each chapter makes the argument, it has themes and its not encyclopedia that aims to be, you know, significant in its ability for large swaths of events. I had very particular method, each part has 4 chapters, a lot of symmetry to the organization and, you know, i made outline and i went to the library and i checked out the 50 that i would need to write the first chapter and put them in a stack in my office and put sticky and did chapter 1 and i made stacks and every time i got to the bottom of a stack i would write that chapter, return those books and then go get the next pile so id have them all ready to hand. Yeah,i just, you know, day by day worked my way through it year by year. It was actually really fun to i teach at harvard and my office is not too far from the Library Building or else i would be able to get books at a time. They look at your books to make sure that theyve been properly checked out and i know the security guards pretty because i spend a lot of time coming out from the library and they came to know what i was doing so everybody would be paying attention to. Youre at the new deal. I cant wait till you get to truman. All of the security guards were hollowing my progress. I recommend books. People read a lot of history. There was people that i checked up with most while i was writing. Host what got left out . Guest tons got left out. It became difficult for historian to write history of the United States, the history of the United States is that the revolution and historical scholarship in the last century or more has involved putting back in all of the people who were stripped out of the story of the United States for a century and a half in tradition of scholars who just really quite they all belong to a single, you know, Demographic Group and they were interested in the history of the Demographic Group and no other, so it meant that we had you know, we had a very narrow understanding of either what politics is, beginning in the 1960s women and and people of color entered the academy and found that women still used programs and black history programs and what became lgbtq and sex and gender studies, historians of science, this incredible expansion of the scope of what people and groups and topics were the proper object of American History and subject of american Historical Books really changed. All those people who kind of exploded the profession thought, well, no one could write it. Given now that we have such a broad understanding of the diversity of the american experience, how could you cram all of that into a single volume. It would involve a rhetorical act of violence and exclusion of certain groups. In any case, youd be kind of beaten up for what you left out or emphasized, what you failed to emphasize and, you know, kind of Academy Scholarship in any field is pretty punishing. Theres a lot of disincentives to do this kind of work. Theres also the idea that you would be promoting a kind of fiction that the country was just one thing and could be reduced to one story. These are the years of not only intellectual formant. But kind of a political sensibility around multiculturalism and stories of the american past. The thing just seemed like an unattainable project which is why it did not get done for a really long time. So i i found that difficult. I mean, i there were many nights i lay awake in bed making lists of all the things that belonged in the chapter that i was writing that i knew i was going to be able to attend to. But i wasnt writing an ebbing encyclopedia and a reader needs to know why the information is in the chapter and has to be in support of some theme or sort of claims and, you know, you come up with rules for what needs to be there and what doesnt need to be there which is not to say that they cant all be second guessed. I guess the way that i eventually got myself to sleep instead of making those lists was the number, this is not the last definitive account. I was trying to rekindle the tradition of attempting to make sense to have nations past and my hope would be that other people would come along and write similar books and they would challenge and even challenge my account and even subvert my book and thats the nature thats historical scholarship works. So its not really meant to be the end. Its meant to be the beginning. Host so what motivated your followup book, this america . Guest well, both of those were books that i was asked to write. I dont think on my own i would pursue the projects. I was asked to write an essay for Foreign Affairs on the history of american nationalism. There was a time in 2018, viewers might remember, trump gave a speech maybe he was in texas. I think he was at a Campaign Rally and he said, he was explaining, he said im a nationalist. I guess im not supposed to use that word but im a nationalist and i think i may be misremembering the details. Subsequently in an interview someone asked him about nationalism and history of the word and its meaning and implications and he just said he didnt care, the point is that he considered himself to be a nationalist and he could defined the world the way he wanted to define it. So there was in 2018 a lot of discussion of rise of american nationalism. And so i was asked to write some kind of account of american nationalism either in the context of National Movements or the idea the idea of america as a nation and so i wrote i wrote an essay that was about that but also what National History does and what the absence of National Histories can do by way of posing a problem to liberalism and then i was asked to turn that essay into a short book. So i did i think i say in preface to the book, i wanted to explain what a nation is and why nation states matter and what liberal nationalism is and why it matters and how it is that in the absence of the defense of liberalism, the kind of nationalism that comes to the floor is iliberal. And we will get into the definitions in just a minute but we have the video of trump in 2016. A globalist is a person that wants the felony the globe to the well not caring about the country much. We cant have that, they have a word, it sort of became old fashion, its called a nationalist and i say really, we are not supposed to use that word, you know what i am, im a nationalist, okay. Im a nationalist. [cheers and applause] nationalist. Use that word. Use that word. Host professor jill lapore when you hear the president say that im a nationalist, what does that say to you . Guest its interesting to hear that and i and i dont have video in this exchange. Im not looking at what the viewers are looking at and i think the video is probably significantly richer in terms of the spirit of the occasion because theres something about calling out and celebrating nationalism before an adoring crowd that i think for a lot of people who have watched nationalists rise to power in order to secure the stability of the people for the purpose of acts of aggression, its a very unsettling if not terrifying thing to bear witness to. Im really stricken in and i had forgotten how he begins by defining a globist which is really interesting because the rhetoric about globalism and globalist in particularly is fundamental antisemitic. Jews were often people without a nation, like, the nation state in 18th and 19th century and nationalism, fidelity to a nation, to a nation state as a core commitment of many people around the world tends to really set to one side people who are stateless so that includes the jews, and a lot of conspiracy theories that date to 18th and 19th century are fundamental antisemitic based on the idea that theres a secret cabal of jewish people who are bankers who control all of the money and that these people who have no National Attachments have global ties that undermine National Borders and so, you know, when the rhetoric about globalists comes back, you know, in our day it really the long tradition of the vocation and its not to say that there are very strenuous and i think important critics of globalization to be made. One of the criticisms of liberal, socalled progressives of the 1990s, bill clinton era forward and even into late 1980s but through obama is unthinking of globalism and in the sense that certain people will be left behind by globalization, but thats okay. Its for the best. And it does enrich enormous number of financiers and people who recognize trump and are thinking about all the ways in which globalization has really been responsible for a great deal of the income inequality around the world. Its an interesting mix of like, yeah, there are people who are really angry about what was going on, beginning in the 90s with the fantasy of globalization but for trump to invoke nationalism in the way that he does and very much to applaud what he is, you know, absolutely presenting as an iliberal nationalism is kind of the classic work of liberal nationalist. One of the most important things of people who do make the move, kind of define globalist which has antisemitic history as demonic, bad people, bad people, people who love the nation, this nation best are the good people and their love is simply another form of patriotism. So the essential step in in people willing to make sacrifices in the nation that can only be asked in the interest of an authoritarian. Theres a whole theres a messy history behind that. One to have things that i try to do by writing this short book, just pause. What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism, when people say nationalism now, they generally only ever mean liberal nationalism, liberals wont defend nationalism any longer. And i will, i think its important to love your country. I think its important to be willing to to, in fact, be willing to think about your obligations to your country, and the civic duty that we owe to one another, like thats the thing that i believe that is central to the project of any liberal nation state and i think its its a vanishingly small space to occupy when everybody is talking about nationalism is is talking about hating other people rather than loving the people of your own country. Host whats the difference between nationalist and a populist . Guest i mean, i dont mean to be semantic about this. Im not sure that its interesting. People use these terms in all different kinds of ways. In the most simple definition a populist is a politician who makes appeals directly to the people rather than to policies or to fellow elected officials. Like a populist isnt going to appeal to congress for support before appealing first to the people and suggesting that everything that he or she is doing in s in the peoples interest which, you know, seems like we live in a democracy. We have a majority that governs. Certainly appealing to the American People. It has a negative connotation around and i think the way that many scholars study the history of populism use the term, is to think about institutions and enlisting the emotional support of the people for the sake of a political agenda that generally doesnt represent in a meaningful way. So when people use the word populist, they are talking to someone who is engaged. Listing the support of the people, while not delivering things to the people which may or may not be a fair definition because you can certainly say progressives of the clinton era, progressives did a lot of things that were in the interest of the people but then they never delivered those things too. Yet, they were not populists because their appeals werent a populist nature. In terms of the tenure and the particular pitch and that thing. Host good afternoon, thanks for spending time was on book tv. This is our indepth program a Monthly Program with one author and his or her body of work. This month we are pleased to have join us from Cambridge Harvard professor jill lapore, the author of many books and received her ph. D in american studies at yale in 1995 and her first book came out in 1998. It was the name of war, King Phillips war and the origins of american identity. Her second book, 2002, a is more american, letters and other characters in the newly unites states. New york came out in 2005, the whites of their eyes, the tea partys revolution and the battle over American History in 2010, the mansion of happiness, the history of life and death in 2012, the story of america essays on origins also came out in 2012, and the book of ages, the life and opinions of Jane Franklin, sister of Benjamin Franklin, came out in 2013. I believe it won the National Book award. The secret history of wonder woman, 2014, joe gulls teeth which we will ask later, came out in 2016. The truths which weve talked about, history of the u. S. 2018, and this america the case for the nation last year and her most recent book is if then how the corporations invented the future, thats a brandnew book and we will talk about that in just a minute but we want to involve you in this conversation as well. You have a question or a comment youd like to make, you can dial in or you can contact us via social media here are the numbers. If you live in eastern time zone 202 7488200 is the number for you. For those in the mountain and pacific 202 7488201. Now if you want to send a text message, you can do so, just include your first name and your city if you would and that can go to 202 7488903. Again the text message number 202 7488903. Now we are also going to scroll through social media account, facebook, you can make a comment, send email, we will scroll through those, just remember those at booktv. So jill lapore, if then, what was the corporation, i hope im saying that correctly. Guest you are. Great importance, you know what david called the best and the brightest in an altogether ironic way here could they had the idea that they could conduct with the early Mainframe Computers available in the 50s and then some ibm made using a new computer language that they could program a computer to conduct a simulation of a us president ial election and use the simulation to provide Campaign Advice to whoever the democratic nominee would be. This was 1959 and they expected the nominee to be stephenson and most of the guys who worked for him had in fact worked in 1956 against a dry diet and 10 white eyes and. In 1960 everyone expected nixon to run as the republican nominee and people thought he would be an affirmative all candidate. At nixon was extremely fermentable candidate, but also vulnerable, but democrats were vulnerable because of their position on civil rights. Greenfield and his colleagues built this machine they call the people machine, computer simulation of the election to prove to the democrats the importance of engaging black voters in the north and taking a position on a civil rights. Thats how the company was founded. Worked for the dnc and 59 and then [inaudible] then they went on to do pioneering work in different workarounds. Its kind of Cambridge Analytica of the cold war and its important in a lot of ways for how its really significantly served kind of a back story to facebook say or much of social media today that did that data mining and as such that the company did is very much kind of the greatgrandfather of so many data mining and social Media Companies today. Host where did you find this story . Guest i found this story in 2015. Im a staff writer for it the new yorker magazine for a long time and often im asked to do pieces providing the history of an institution that people think they know all about, but in fact just a gentle, but historians know about and i was asked to write the history and 2015 which was very much in the news for all kinds of reasons. It became quickly clear that the Polling Industry was much in decline and crisis answer panted by data science. Like why would you call 3000 people on the phone and ask them questions that hire a stop to do that if you could just follow them online and extract the data in figure out their political preferences without ever doing that . Data science is replacing and making obsolete the Polling Industry. Once that was clear i got interested in figuring out when that happened and how that happened. I came across in a journal article this story about the supplement X Corporation providing advice during election simulation during the Campaign Kennedy campaign and then i wrote the article, meanwhile i got interested in this company like how come no ones ever heard of this company, what happened to this company. I went to archives to try to find the corporate records. Corporate records dont exist. The companys records or nonexistent. I did find a large swath of material related to the history of the company was at mit in the papers of its the chairman of the Research Board of the company was a Research Scientist at mit work. I started going through these boxes of mostly un cataloged papers and its a richer story about a lot of Different Things that the company had done. They had a hand in all different kinds of work that is done now and that i never thought of as having had origins of the cold war. It explained a lot to me and i didnt buy any stretch set out to write a history of data science, but its a compelling story and the characters are kind of fantastic. Yeah, thats why i wrote the book. Host so the corporate records dont exist. Is that nefarious . Guest no. The company went bankrupt in 1970, had been headquartered in new york in the new york office was run by greenfield of the president of the company. He had fallen into considerable dissolution after 1968 when his estranged wife died in terribly tragic circumstances and when the country coming unraveled the work it had done in vietnam he was basically sleeping on peoples couches and like lost track of like im sure he pay the rent of stuff just got shredded. May be stored in a warehouse for a while. Like people lose their Companies Lose their records all the time. [inaudible] people were still interested in what the company had done even in 1970, 71 people would write to this mit guy, a brilliant political scientists and say im looking for the following materials relating to the simple amount X Corporation and can you tell me their archives and he would say they are in a warehouse in new york and you should write to the following address, but then people started asking and he was like i dont know. So, they just got trashed. Host in fact, the novel was written about the corporation. Guest there are two different novels written about the Company First came out in 1964. One West New York times bestseller for a long time and everyone expected it to be made into a film and then it wasnt for complicated reasons and the other was assigned to it sign. Seeming lock it was made in the 1970s and then basically remade into the matrix so the matrix is about a world in which we are living in a simulation rather than a world was a story from the 1964 novel about the corporation. In a way like we all know the story of this dystopian fictional version of the company because thats what the matrix is, but in some ways more sophisticated story that was written published in 1964 in the title is because the company stored [inaudible] 480 is a novel about the 1964 president ial election in which a very admirable president ial candidate really admirable young guy, with the best of intentions is a recruited simulmatics run for president and expected simulmatics lose in a way that will help the party prevail and 68 and his campaign is conducted by a computer simulation of the election. Everything is supposed to do hes told to do by computer. Its written by this guy, eugene verdict who i just love. He was like a california surfer beach boy who went to the navy was kind of a Navy War Hero and then was a writer, one a lot of writing prizes for his fiction. Got a phd and then taught political theory at the university of california berkeley and wrote novels. He wrote magazine pieces as well. He cowrote the ugly american, astonishing publishing success, but he wrote other books which god it made into came out and 62 during the cuban missile crisis with henry fonda as the president of the United States. Its a great movie. He worked for greenfield in 1956. Trying to help stephen when the california primary during against his democratic competitors. When greenfield formed simulmatics he asked verdict to join in verdict said no. He was an incredibly worldfamous celebrity, so not the kind of thing he would take on but he was fascinated by it and thought it was indefensible and would destroy american politics, so he got his former colleagues to semis top about the company, how it did its work, even print cards and stuff like programs and hes used that stuff to write a really distressing novel about the company that came out in 64, much to the companies the dismay. Yeah, so, verdict dies tragically young the next year while playing doubles tennis. He had a terrible heart condition so people dont know about verdict anymore but he was the kind of public intellectual that doesnt exist anymore and probably shouldnt in that he was a celebrity spokesman for a beer company doing tv ads and magazine ads and his motto was for a manlier brew like the most manly. Host lets hear from our viewers and begin with eduardo in arlington virginia. Eduardo, you are on with harvards caller hello. A big fan of cspan and book tv. Heard you talking about nationalism and i think our country is a country of immigrants at least thats what the we have in new york city and we love it and talking about the book on us history so im asking how do you think in view of being a melting pot and like a country of all faiths, how his religious beliefs or practices kind of is it about the same, slanting up or down and my only example is also thanksgiving in 1789, president washington was a day of thanksgiving to god and then president lincoln in 1863 also made a proximate kate proclamation of the same , so thank you. Host thank you, eduardo. Guest thank you. To get to your question about i guess the question about religious in American History, but to think a little bit about the way you describe the country as a nation of immigrants and the importance of the melting pot that each of those expressions in the title of the book by john f. Kennedy [inaudible] each of the expressions as a people and nation state has a history emerging from political battles of their own day we carry them forward and use them in our own political battles i mean in the same way we use the expression Founding Fathers which was not used before 1960s when it was used to defend interpretation of the constitution to then [inaudible] we use Founding Fathers all the time because people have always said that. Its a political convention, not that these are important terms and that we need to know kind of the caboose that follows in their wake of the things and where they come from, but in particular what americans would see as Ethnic Diversity is interesting and has a long history and in each term in American History where there is a crisis over immigration and the constitution of the people. A key term tends to emergence of you keep practices for instance like thanksgiving. The thing thats interesting to me about american religious pluralism and tolerance as i think we are thinking to gain a perspective on our current battles over freedom of religion and even battles of secularism would be to recall and i spend time with this argument in these truths and ive also written elsewhere to recall their commitment to political tolerations that is our commitment to living in a quality where we have more than one Political Party where people can speak against the government freely. Political dissent is accepted and in fact, called for comes from the establishment of religious toleration to say what comes first is tolerating people with religious views making possible tolerating people with a different political views and that is a dissent from the 17th century and the english revolution and the english civil war of the 17th century. The political philosophy of toleration emerges from people coming to see in the years after the price that proclamation protestant proclamation that its okay for people to different ideals that religion and for someone like locke or john milton the meaning is because the truth rollout is always the idea. People can believe whatever they want, but if you believe theres a truth in a divine sense then it will prevail like whats the worry, why tell people what to believe. Its no way for them you can tell people what to believe and expect them to believe. People will find the truth if its true. Its a really in some ways beautiful idea and it makes possible the in what are the english colonies a tremendous growth in their religious sect which many of the colonies were added in the first place off the puritan new england colonies, maryland as a catholic colony, many of these colonies were handed by people who couldnt express their religious views or practice their religion in england before 1641, and they come in practice their religious views and worship the way they please in these colonies where they are distant from the enforcement of the church of england. In many cases they then also suppress other peoples religious experience, but that eases up over the course of the 17th century, so by the 1730s with the first great awakening its a proliferation of religious sect and then there is also an emergence of a whole alignment error of skepticism so you have a thomas paine by 1776 and into the 1770s and 1780s with the age of reason teaching he has no church. That acceptance that people can worship their god the way they want is this fundamental to what emerges in a colony which is a commitment to political toleration. On the same ground that people can believe whatever they want. They can vote for who they are going to vote for and even organizing as a Political Party and disagree with the people in power. So long as this is what the freedom of the process for, exactly the same basic idea of the freedom of religion. Benjamin franklin writes in his apology and 1731, here is my job as a printer to print everyones view because in the end truth will win in a fair field with when truth and error have a fight truth always wins than this of the truth behind a jury trial. Fairfield has this argument that 12 reasonable feet people decide which is right so as a printer franklin said i will print a diversity of views, but readers will tell like a juror in a trial who is right. Thats how our whole set of ideas about expression both religious and political expression emerges and we can see it down to the bills of rights of the states and finally the bill of rights amended to the constitution in 1791. That is the long two centuries tradition on which our requirement that there be no religious test for officeholders in our First Amendment test of religious. Its the case that beginning in 1979 with the moral majority the emergence of the moral majority, a very particular evangelical christian tradition that the nation had always been christian and there could be evidence found for this all along the path of American History and people point to you know washington said it at thanksgiving or link to this tradition and those are practices that are important part of American History, but the deeper and a foundational commitment to freedom of it religious expression is what makes possible that all these things seem now completely fragile in the face of social media is among the tragedies of the 21st century. Host lets hear from can in atlanta, georgia. Hello. Caller hey there. How are you, joe . I appreciate it very much. I work with a state legislator of georgia, and we just finished a 60 year project in a civics and its going to be rolled out beginning this year. They going to do it with recreational vehicles traveling to every state capital and it has to do with what i heard you say when he first started talking today about it would be good if the americans do more and got more involved and so forth. This is it designed to get 100 of the people to address the number one problem, which is civic illiteracy of all of us. We are practicing democracy and we do the pledge of allegiance and were supposed to be using a republic or the republican form and this is such a serious matter that many years ago a guy named Thurgood Marshall was on the Supreme Court and i cant think of his name right now. He was chief justice oh, Warren Burger and he told us, he said civic illiteracy is so pronounced that the problem isnt that we dont know. The problem is we dont know that we dont know. Host we are going to leave it there and have professor jill lepore respond to the big idea of civic literacy. Guest thank you. I was going to ask, but i guess hes not on the line any longer with heatsinks are the forces responsible for this. I agree there is a huge lack of civic education. I concur. I dont know anything about the program hes involved with in atlanta georgia. There are number programs going programs going on all over the country, some which are incredibly exciting. My colleague at harvard runs democratic knowledge project i hear from people doing Civics Education on the time. I write in these truths and i wrote as an oldfashioned civics textbook so i wholeheartedly support the idea that we need more and better Civics Education. Im always curious to see what people think is the reason we dont have it and i would have been curious to ask him. Theres also kind of always the narrative like we used to have that it was so great to did really used to have it and it didnt really used to be so great. We do urgently need it, but what it is is that i think in our political environment sadly a source of contestation. Like what we mean when we say that . The president called in a speech earlier this year that was designed to capture that 15 minutes of the media a patriotic [inaudible] they are usually associated with a single Political Party. Civics education is not part us and. Americans dont really know the meaning of the word nonpartisan anymore , so what does that mean today . I would say i see a lot of evidence of the long emphasis on Stem Education k12. It is the followon, inevitable consequence of that to the cold war and the federal government funding a very particular narrow sort of research at universities to advance the National Security interest of the cold war that really had to affect of impoverishing every other field, arts and humanities and languages in particular, that kind of trickle down to k12 with the emphasis on Stem Education and we now see the consequences. You know political culture in complete disarray where it is not the fault of teachers, Public School teachers who they are not asked to teach these subjects. They are not going to research these subjects. And its not the fault of kids. The reason for this change [inaudible] host a related question took this is a text and a reminder if you send a text include your first name in your city, but its a question for jill lepore. What does she think about the recent white house sponsored conference on examining liberal bias bias in teaching American History . Guest so, i was there an actual conference . I thought it was just a speech. Do you know, peter . Host i think there was a meeting. Guest what there was or what i remember hearing about and we dont have the collar on the line to query, but there was a call for National Commission that would be called the 1776 project that was meant as a repost to the New York Times 1619 project. I dont think the commission i could be wrong. Its too exhausting to follow the media stunts of people taking position for the sake of getting cameras on them, so i dont know. What do i think of it . It reminds been a lot of i feel my answer is long but i will give im a story teller so i tell a story. In 1965, i believe, Lyndon Johnson administration set up a bicentennial commission, it was the two hundreds anniversary of the stamp act to set off the resistance [inaudible] johnson understand when it to do some work to care for what would be the nations 200th anniversary in 1776 and there would be a build up of events between 65 and 76 because there was a lot to mark on the way , but in 1970 the boston massacre, what would we do in 1973 [inaudible] the commission in 1970 in 1965 the year the Voting Rights act. Its the heyday of the classic savings of the civil rights movement. What the Johnson Administration determined was telling the nations story a new and the 1960s and 70s in the struggle for solo rights and it should do the kind of things that James Baldwin was asking the American People to do, which was to look at the nations history of slavery in the atrocity of jim crow and ongoing inequality and racial injustices and brutality. Indigenous peoples movement, that was also very much reach the attention of the Mainstream Press by then not too far from the alcatraz action were really very much at the height of the early years of the chicano movement, gay rights movement, so johnsons bicentennial commission was interested in telling this big story, this kind of new big story. Johnson decided 68 not to run. Nixon inaugurated in 1969 looks at johnsons commission and this is basically what trump said about what he thinks this conspiracy of liberals to indoctrinate american schoolchildren and College Students to hate america. So, this is all from memory. Devers will say thats not exactly right, but nixon basically kicks a lot of johnsons appointees and they will have a celebration of history that is not unlike i would imagine the one trumps call in for with his 1776 project. So, nixon puts these people on an actual historians, okay, thats a joke like its not actually how history happened like you can do that, president nixon, but you wont get through scholars. Johnsons history may have been partisan and complicated for other reasons but your history is like a comic book. So this leads to a series of incredibly intense protests at the commemoration of the bicentennial. Its march 5, 1970, the 200th anniversary of the boston mass. Massacre, but may 5, but shooting at kent state, you know a whole generation of american colleges students that have this poster on their wall of the boston massacre was like a motto about kent state like thats the revolution, the revolutionists students protesting the war in vietnam. Or nixons department of defense [inaudible] so there is a huge move in the 70s about which version you know, we begin this conversation about americans having two versions in that fact train fracturing has its divided the moment. In 1973 in boston, when there is this big celebration in boston so december 16, 1973, 200th anniversary of the dumping of the tea. These businessmen get like old boat and rig it up to look like an 18th century boat they sailing from england and its going to be a ceremonial dumping of the tea with thousands of people they are, but the whole thing is protested, so theres a bunch of people like in a raft wearing nixon grub or masks. This is like watergate. Mixing heads doing im not a crook pain with a bunch of Indigenous People from new england to show to protest the reenactors dressed up as mohawks which the sons of liberty did dress up with mohawks to dump the tea. There was like a gay pride and then a very big march of Vietnam Veterans against the war protesting the militarization of the protests. So, if you want to wonder when some kind of unitary notion of the american past shattered, it didnt happen two weeks ago when trump said theres a liberal conspiracy. Didnt happen with the 1619 project like its been going on for a very long time, but in fact a lack of knowledge of history means we dont even have history of history problem. Host jill lepore, when do you find time to synthesize all this information creature. Guest you know, i teach every day like what you are asked to do when you teach his come up with explanations and answers and ways to help people think about problems and to help students figure out how to investigate something that interests them, so mainly its the gift of being able to be in the company of young people who ask questions and help you think about them. Host susie texted a question as well, little offtopic perhaps that was privileged to hear david blight discussed Frederick Douglas and noting his omissions of his white why panic in his autobiography remind me of Ben Franklins omission of the reference to jane in any public writings, so i wonder if its perhaps typical of the time and not as much of a slide as it seems . Guest thats interesting question. For those that have not read davids biography of Frederick Douglass you actually should. This is actually an opportunity for me too correct it, a fact. You said my book about Jane Franklin when the National Book award, it didnt pick it was a finalist. Yeah, i mean, so here its worthwhile remembering that Frederick Douglas who wrote three autobiographies was very much influenced by Benjamin Franklins autobiography, which was published first in 1790 after franklin died and in english shortly thereafter, not in franklins lifetime. So really is every american autobiography influenced by this autobiography which is to say that franklin established the idea with the story of the autobiography will serve as an allegory for the story in franklins case the story of the country. This was anything to do like you know there were biographies of famous people well, you are not supposed to write the story. This was a new genre franklin was hoping to invent and he told the story of his life. Franklin said having been bored into poverty this is a rough paraphrase, i write this book in order people interested can know how to emanate emulate me and go from ignorance to knowledge. How did i go from rags to issues, from poverty to prosperity. Franklin had written in essay called the way to wealth or another essay called advice to be tradesmen took his work is about how to become free and prosperous. Lessons on how to do good. For franklin, its a story you are telling in the story of your life starting with nothing and become someone. Of the story is about you do it all on your own, like thats crucial to franklins tail. You shouldnt have to need other peoples help and in franklins story he talks to people that probably dont have any help and may not be able to get any. His advice is here is how to do this yourself. We can think about that historically and realize this is an age of idleness, an enormous amount of drunkenness. For franklins saint pick yourself up and work hard, economic mobility in his day was unusual. But for that story to work, for him to give the advice to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, you can need anyones help, so the fact franklin had an extraordinary amount of help in that journey, in that rise he deliberately leaves out of the story. Took that includes his sister and also theres a thousand other reasons why he doesnt write about his sister, his closest correspondent. I dont think its mere convention. Its a plot device, necessary for the plot of the story. For douglas, whose stories about the journey from slavery to freedom, franklin went from poverty to wealth and douglas slavery to freedom, it is not the same exact structure because douglas did need a lot of help and he cant for Different Reasons douglas cant say who helped him. In 1845, when the narrative of threadless Frederick Douglass comes out, hes a few did a fugitive. They could face charges. He cant say what help he got. He came into me he was, but its not a plot device. There is a legal reason he cant talk about the help he got, but he does talk about the white woman who taught him to read and to some degree also teaches himself to read the way franklin teaches himself to read. So, i cannot now recall with explanations for why douglas wife has no part of the story as he tells it. You know, some of it is 19th century convention, but thats absolutely not all of it. Yeah, actually its quite a long answer to think about the invisibility of women in mens success story, but not to the root convention of the time. You see it all the time. Every Silicon Valley veteran or is about inventing himself. Its a big piece of i was watching boys state peter, have you seen the movie boys state . Host no comments on my list is. Guest its a documentary and its about every state has a summer camp for political geek kids and there is a girls one and one and the boys state in texas is a documentary and one of the characters in it, hes a person you know High School Boy who wants to go into politics. He keeps talking and gives this Campaign Speech about how hes a selfmade man and came from nothing came to this. Between shots hes always on a cell phone talking to his mother. Its like okay, incredibly appealing young man and god bless him. Your mother really helped make you and somewhere in the film he says that, but its so much a part of us of american individualism that we dont acknowledge people that help us out and in particular we dont acknowledge women unbelievably maddening. Its not a 19th century, not 18th century, there is something it varies over time. But, its very much still with us. Host that gave us a chance to talk about the National Book award finalist. Book of ages, life and opinions of Jane Franklins that jill lepore published in 2013. Leonard, monroe via, california, please go ahead with your question for professor lepore. Caller thank you, professor lepore. Im a bit nervous. First time i called into a television show, but i went thank you because i noticed apple books that all of your books are audio, and for persons like myself with very severe dyslexia it makes it more accessible and even for my friends that are blind. When you go back to harvard, could you ask the other professors put most of their books on audiobooks so its more accessible for people like myself . Host i am so sorry. I thought you were finished. Professor lepore . Guest yeah, thanks for that. Actually, as a person i guess who listens to a lot of books all the time, i love audiobooks, i love audio storytelling. Most of my books, i think, since my book, the secret history of wonder woman i have been the near ereader narrator, and i would say not all writers should do their audiobooks. Some people are not good , but i really like to do it and i love hearing from listeners who listen to the book and to only listen to books read by writers to me like its more intimate. I also you may be interested to listen to a podcast called the last archives that you can listen to for free tickets my exploration of the nature of truth in the history of truth in the 20th century trying to solve the history through radio drama. I wish i could tell you that my colleagues at harvard would do something if i said, but i dont have that kind of influence. Host we have a followup text from someone, what is jill lepores typical work schedule for writing books . Guest most of my work habits date to when i was a kid. In my family we all had to work a lot of jobs. It was just understood we would work a lot. So, my for those of you that have bread vendor Ben Franklins autobiography, ive always had a lot of like time to get the work done so i could get some reading done well is supposedly working. I have i do a lot of things at a frantic pace to earn back the time for reading. Its really nice i ended up having a job thats basically reading. For me, how i handle i have a lot of different hands time because mainly, producer professor. I generally beginning of the month i get out a calendar. In the olden days it was a piece of paper and i just mark off everything i have to do that semester, all the committee meetings, lectures, office hour schedule, department meetings, times im teaching and i try to move the stuff into particular days. Then every day im not teaching or in a meeting , i put a big w over the day and thats writing day. Those are sacrosanct, so if someone says i would like to meet with you tuesday or lets go for lunch, can you run wednesday morning, i will say im sorry, im completely tied up. I think the problem for a lot of academics to have control over their own time is that if you dont schedule writing time than on the other things you do will theres like a tent of things like my big priority is being available to meet with students, but before we im on campus fulltime. Anyway, the main thing i do is protect my writing time from other things. You know a lot of people say yes to a lot of things like this, spending two hours doing this is not a thing i. Because i tended to spend my time you know with my family if im not writing or teaching. Host yes, we have been trying to get you want for quite a while so we appreciate your time today. There is a publication, how to write a paper for this class that professor lepore put out and one of the opening sentences to write history is to make argument by telling a story about dead people. You will be dead one day to, so please play fair and remember never condescend. Its probably bad enough being dead without some smart alec using your life in times to make a specious claims. Guest i stand by it. Host do you still handed that out to students . Guest i have it on my webpage because teachers ask for it all the time and people write and say how do you teach people about writing. When you read it back it seems angry. Its not angry, but i have found this is when i was teaching on the American Revolution and its white with this. Assignment to find a person that left behind letters or selfportraits or somebody of work work that could be investigated to tell the story of their life and make an argument about the American Revolution and answer what had for a long time been the big question about the American Revolution, which whether it was truly radical or conservative. So, students would do this work and i would get drafts of their papers and they would be writing about someone like Jane Franklin or Benjamin Franklin or others whoever and the essays would treat these people as if they werent human beings like puppets on a stage to be brought on to save airlines and then go behind the curtain and and and the student say whatever. They would quote them and then kind of beat them up about what they like they would bring the puppet online to say some life and then they would hit them and i was baffled by this. These were real people like they are not just the subject of your paper. Its not like math where you do a proof and variables like these were people. They had to children and they had sex and you know they had childbirth and they knew how to use a gun like whatever they were human beings, so thats without line comes from. Determined and hardworking and creative, yeah. Its frustrating to see how people we do this to people all the time. I think im not on social media but i think a great deal of what social media is is saying something about people that is unfair to them. Thats my longwinded explanation of the sentence the passage you quoted. Host lets hear from martha, and charleston, south carolina. Thanks for holding, martha. Caller hello rick i think this is the longest told ive ever had on cspan because jill really does answer thoroughly. Thank you, jill. Guest im sorry, martha. Thanks for your time. Caller active teacher in thank goodness students have you as a teacher and your writing has been wonderful. I have to tell you, these truths was recommended to me by one of my second grade students from 30 years ago who writes me about his reading all the time. Hes in new zealand doing graduate work and he wrote me, have you read these truths and of course i could write back to . Guest him that i had read book of ages and i had read wonder woman, but i had not gone to these truths yet, so talk about writing, i think letterwriting and with older students from 30 years ago is a real gift, jill, to know my student found you before i even told him about you. Guest thats so nice of you. Its nice you are still in punch like that. Caller the book of ages is the reason why i went on to wonder woman because the subject of the book of ages of course fascinated with franklins sister in the bifocals and the glasses and all of that and im still adjusting to my bifocals, but wonder woman i would have never picked up unless you have been the author or tell me why you wrote about wonder woman. Host thank you, martha. Guest thanks, martha. Hello to your student out there. Yeah, wonder woman like the tale i told about the Simulmatics Corporation which is something i stumbled across in an archive in the compelled to write about and im sort of like with martha that it would not have thought about writing a book about wonder woman. I wasnt like a wonder woman fan as a kid or as an adult. Im not a superhero person. I had watched like all of the lousy superhero muzi movies because of my kids, but thats been my experience of the culture of the superhero , but sometime back when would this have been asked 2011, cast your mind back to 2011 in the republican primary season where a large number of republicans, mitt romney, gingrich, michele bachmann, ron paul, big field collecting that was herman cain may be, big field of republicans running for the nomination to compete against obamas reelection and planned parenthood had been in the news a lot and had become each of these candidates a member who i have now forgotten had pledged to i think it was the Susan B Anthony list if elected i would defund planned parenthood so i had an assignment from the new yorker where i write to write the history of planned parenthood. Likewise planned parenthood suddenly like an issue in the republican contest . So, i started researching that story and the papers of planned Parenthood Organization at State College Wonderful Library and so are the papers of Margaret Sanger who is the founder of planned parenthood in 1916, but meanwhile i was writing an essay i agreed to give a paper heel law school and im interested in the history of truth so i decided that i wanted to write an essay about the history of the lie detector which was invented at harvard by an undergraduate right around the time planned parenthood was founded. I was excited to write an essay about him, but i went to like wikipedia to find out about him and theres like two sentences, invented the lie detector tests as an undergraduate of harvard and then created the comic book superhero wonder woman. There was like nothing else like no meaningful scholarship on him and no explanation of how these two things connected to one another. So i set about doing the research to explain the lie detector and when i went to the Margaret Sanger papers i kept coming across letters to the sky guy from Margaret Sanger or it turned out that singers sister ethel had founded planned parenthood with her and then been kicked out of the organization for complicated reasons, but that ethels daughter, olive, was the mother of his children and lived with him and his wife in a threeway marriage, so thats like to interesting to not read about so i started researching, researching, researching and researching until i came to the conclusion that was too important to not write a book about. I also pretty early on wrote to all of his oldest son who is a wonderful brilliant man and asked him about where the family papers were in whether he would speak to me. The family had not shared its incredible trove of letters especially photographs and diaries with anyone because of the unconventional family story, which was a scandal in marstons lifetime and was a well hidden secret. Had this really powerful moment when i was at smith and i had done all this research and written an article for the new yorker about planned parenthood called birthright and then went back to do more looking and decided i wanted to do this thing about wonder woman and i met in the office of one of the curators of the library to ask some questions about i think the ms. Magazine collection and i said the question is not processed so you you out where they are but usually the curators are doing it. Shes like where you just here working on planned parenthood and im like and now im working on something else. Im looking in this collection and im wondering if you can tell me where to find any papers about William Moulton marston and she was like box 257. How about all live, is there a file or wonder woman and we went through all this and she was scribbling everything down and then looks at me and causes like her job like that literal thing where peoples job she nearly jumped out of her chair and said oh, my god, wonder woman is Margaret Sanger and i looked at her and said quietly this is the big insight of the Archival Research and this was the thing that was written about the comp it a family between sanger and the emergence of a wonder woman as this icon. It was just an exciting thing in the archives. Im sorry, martha. You said i give long answers and now given the longest one yet. Host is it Margaret Sanger being exercised from planned parenthood at this point . Guest yes. Host that was a short answer. Guest that was a short answer. Like i know thats true. Host lets hear from bill in kansas city, missouri. Hello, bill. Caller peter, this is great. Thank you so much. You look like you are enjoying it as much as the viewers are. Jill, i was a champion of your work going on the way back to the name of war at a little bookstore in vermont and im still a champion of your work in my capacity as an elderly librarian here in kansas city. I have always wanted to ask either you or some other academic historian the extent to which you rely on the talents, curiosity of your students to assist you in the mechanics, fact checking, finding documents etc. Etc. You have talked to several times this morning i think you even used the phrase, the gift of connecting with curious, interesting young folk and as a geezer im so excited when i see a sparkle in some Young Persons eye when i handed up book of ages or tell them about age of war or lets read about new york city in 1741, so a longwinded question, but longwinded this seems to be the calling card today. Where bonnie raitt, meryl streep, and jill lepore, whatever thats worth peter we believe that there, jill lepore, whats your answer regarding students . Jill lepore i learned from students a thousand different ways. I know there are plenty of historians who have large teams of students doing Research Work for them. I generally dont. There are some really notable exceptions. Where i just cant do the thing that needs to be done. I would say i actually rely to a huge degree on librarians and archivists. Since the time of digitizing of collection and collections digitize a bull, i often have the experience of fred if then i wanted to look at the stevenson papers, which are printed, i did not have time, given my teaching schedule and parenting obligations to take a trip to princeton. Especially because i thought, Natalie Stevenson papers are extensive but really carefully indexed. I could see there was a folder about greenfield and company, the founders. It was a big folder, i think it was 400 pages, libraries that have resources now you can write and say i would like to see that folder and they will scan every item in it for you. It actually works well for the libraries because you pay for the scanning and now the folder is scanned for anybody whoever wants it. Its a way that actually libraries get resources rather than drained the resources its a clever thing. Not every library can do that, it still takes staffs resources, you have to have the resources to do it. I rely on that kindness all the time and especially aband i need something really fast and obscured, may be hard to find in the collection, people will help you find it. They are incredibly generous. They also like to see it next week in the new yorker. Something like when i wrote this book abi found at nyu, maybe a dozen notebooks that look like models calf, cow, there was a diary, handwritten diary. Very expensive. I went down and took one full day, they didnt have the resources to do this, i photographed with my iphone every page of this notebook. Then i did research in the city but i didnt have time to transcribe all that tough handwriting. Then i hired a graduate student to do that work. But the first time ab occasionally i will hire somebody abif there is no way i can find the time to do the transcription work. Last year i was a fellow at the abon sabbatical and they will hire for you and pay the salary of up to four Research Assistants to help you on whatever project at the Radcliffe Institute to do. I was working on the last archive and i hired abits the first time i had a team to do these things. Totally Different Things. That is a case where i benefited because they were brilliant and incredible and resourceful. Fun and creative, super energetic. They brought so much energy to the project. Thats where its also really good for students to wean every week to talk about research agenda, people report what they found. They share story ideas. That was super fun. We are doing the Second Season of the last archive right now, i dont have a team anymore. I dont have the budget to hire people, only extraordinary circumstances or some sort of specific thing. I really like doing the archival work myself. Im sad if i cant do it and have help, id much rather be in the archives and program the archives. Im a little too controlling probably to have other people do that kind of stuff for me in any routine way. Thats why you have kids. [laughter] incorporate them into our work. Did joe gold history of his life exist . Jill lepore gould, who was a deranged homeless man, he was born in maybe 1890s died in 1957. Beginning in the 19 teens claimed to be writing history a book called history of our time he proposed would be the longest book ever written, a oral history of everybody he met he would write down every word he ever heard he carried them all around. It was said to be incredible and then said to be merely affection of his. Thats a project my investigation took at joel gould story because i was teaching a class on how to write a biography. It was an object lesson on how to not write a biography. Goulds a subject of two different essays by the new york or writer incredibly wonderful vivid writer Joseph Mitchell who wrote abthis is so long ago i dont really remember, maybe in 45, 42, maybe professor siegel, in the middle of the dark days of the war. There was a quirky story how there will always be in new york, theres this crazy guy in Greenwich Village who proposes hes writing this book. In 1964 mitchell published basically a retraction called joel gould secret he discovered in the course of interviewing and writing the profile of gould in 1942 that the book didnt exist. It was a figment of deranged imagination. That mitchell confesses he didnt reveal that at the time because abalways imagine we write a book we never finished, the story of our lives. And isnt ever really going to be a book, we are always hoping to do something we can never quite achieved. Joel gould was therefore historic aband the elusiveness of great art. I signed this to my undergraduates, when i was getting ready to go to class in the class about geography i noticed i had completely forgotten that in the original story mitchell says that gould has a will in the pocket of his jacket, this baggy overcoat this homeless guy is wearing, he pulls out the will all the time and says when i die a third of my manuscript is going to the smithsonian but two thirds to harvard. He graduated from harvard a literally prepping for class and i thought, my students are going to say, did he check at harvard . If mitchells whole thing is the book never existed because he couldnt find it. Gould died in 1957 maybe it ended up at harvard and just miscategorized. So i went to the library to look for it and found all this other stuff that proves that everything mitchell said was wrong and i fell down the rabbit hole of needing to find out whether the book existed and mitchell was lying the first time or whether the book didnt exist and mitchell was lying the second time. Wrong, not necessarily lying. So i went on this crazy ab supposedly it was never written, i did find the volume in the New York Public Library and mitchells papers which had only been given to the library. Was incredibly thrilling. It was funny because a host jill lepore, if i could ask you to get more in the middle of the camera. We dont want to lose you. We hear from ariel in portsmouth new hampshire, arielle, these go ahead. Thank you for taking the call, i appreciate you for keeping this program for so many years. abi wonder why so few if any academic historians spend any time dealing with the genocide committed against american indians, native incompetents of north america. Specifically when you are talking about civics and the 1593 project and the conservative project, you talk about restitution for slavery, but no one ever talks about restitution for native americans, the return to their lands were at least something to it. What is it that academic historians documented the violence and address this issue that is the foundational issue for north america. Thank you. Jill lepore thank you so much arielle, i dont you abi know you dont want a long answer or historical graphic one piece that i would dispute the preface of the question which is that historians dont study or engage in moral examination of the genocide of Indigenous People. I think the richest period of scholarship on that subject came at the time of the 500th anniversary of abin 1992, throughout the 1990s and the late 1980s there were an extraordinary revelation of research. A whole world of books ab extraordinary research into the ecological consequence, ab explanations, theres an extraordinary amount of Research Done in that period. Its also the case of indigenous Study Program earn incredibly vibrant part of academic life. I do see what you mean about the reparations argument as part of our Public Discourse, the reparations for slavery have a kind of prominence in Public Discourse and express not least in the monument toppling the world. We dont see the same discourse with regard with whats to be done with the reckoning with not only with of course that genocide and the dispossession but the manifold betrayal in the ongoing injustice, the denial of nationhood, the abuse of the native land, Police Brutality against Indigenous People which is greater than as proportion of the population a atheres a whole lot to study a whole lot of people doing that work. I guess i would view it as something thats not being done. Whats different in many ways analytically between the call for examining slavery and jim crow, the new drum crow, and the argument for reparation. The study of the colonialism and genocide and atrocity and dispossession and dislocation, the system of simulation. The civil rights struggle in the United States generally fits with it abmy colleague pretty much taught me ab theres a critique to be made the civil rights and arguments for reparation as in a larger american narrative of right speaking. Seeking full citizenship and equality have citizens. Whereas so many native people want to be thought as not rights as american citizens but the remedy is the recommendation of indigenous nations and that doesnt fit so well within the larger narrative. All americans seeking rights and seeking full equality as citizens and equal justice under the law. That analytically is the difference. Now ive given you far more than he probably wanted to hear about this question. Host a followup email on that from wg b, will u. S. History Going Forward be exclusively about racial injustice, abwhich define us only in terms of victimhood . Jill lepore no, its not that now. I dont recognize that as a world in which thats how history is taught. I remember years ago i was working on a book about the tea party movement. I watched a lot of History Education on fox news, glenn beck, if you recall, when the show started in 2009 turn his studio into a school run with an open desk and green chalkboard and sean hannity would do these many lectures on the American Revolution. Back kept talking about the indoctrination of american schoolchildren into the idea that the United States had committed atrocities that slavery was an atrocity that the story of america was a story of racial injustice. This was a big abit was what was being taught in american schools. In the book one of my kids i think of third grade at the time studying the American Revolution so i went to the school building, Public School very liberal city and watched the kids do what they were doing, breaking into groups to talk about signal events of the revolution about the lexington conqueror, the boston massacre the dumping of the tea. I felt like i can write about in this book because here these kids were doing like the most conventional things like what were the objections abdid the sons of liberty want to make peace with the king or did they want to have no king . When did they change their mind . [laughter] your basic civics and History Education which is pretty much what goes on. To me its largely mythical that to include also in that struggle that there was partitions for enslaved people in boston saying, you guys believe in national rights, thats great, then we are free. Thats part of that story, the problem is not making that be part of the story, the problem is the generations of historians that ripped that out of the story and pretend thats never happened. Ned ketchum idaho, you are on booktv with author jill lepore. Caller hey joe, thank you so much for what you do. I appreciate it. Its great to hear from you. Im sure its not easy. Jill, i dont know abim in the pacific northwest, what i can tell you about whats going on here, im in idaho, oregon, washington, its the wild west right now. Its pretty interesting. In the separatist movement right now, we have a brandnew female Lieutenant Governor who, she was actually abeverybody said, ida co. Is going to have women we are praising women now then when the pandemic hit she went far right and kinda created a civil war between the Republican Party and the state. This region never really had the slavery issue, we just we were even states that point during the civil war, we didnt have protests and everything going on. Its pretty exciting. What i can tell you, women are really taking over. They are rising around here, its what i can tell you. My new doctor is a woman, the women and our judicial there is a jailer a host i think we got the idea, lets hear from professor lepore. Jill lepore thanks for calling ned, theres a lot going on it sounds like thats captured your attention. One of the things i would say about the story its so interesting about womens political participation is just how long it was that male politicians expected women to vote as a block, something about being female meant you had a particular political sympathy. A big reason why it took women so long to get the vote because if women were going to vote as a block we would be really destabilizing to politics. Its when it becomes like women are not gonna vote as a block, like everyone else does, the way the people and their family in the neighborhood vote that makes it possible for women to gain the right to vote. Then it turns out over the last few elections there are some political sympathies, never a part of an agenda for women, the big abi think its 1980 the word gender gap is coined to talk about voter preference female voters general black enthusiasm abthe gap that noticed in many Election Citizen at the moment the black female voter has captured i think the imagination of the kind of Political Press as kind of the new voter to watch. I myself am less convinced these demographic categories are all that defines us. Thats a whole other story. Part of that story is told in these truths. Jill lepore reports on campaigns ink found in the 30s and the First Political Consulting Firm ever created in the u. S. Linda is in Melbourne Beach florida, please go ahead with your question. Caller highi have a questio. Host linda, you are going to have to turn down your tv, just talk into your telephone. Caller i have a question. I have a comment. Im 70 years old and back in the 70s i asked my grandmother a lot of questions about my familys history and her grandfather and greatgrandfather both on in the civil war. She talked about gettysburg, the battle of atlanta, everything like that. What i learned from what she said that they were a people that had a sense of honor, certain rules of what a man was and what a man did. I think its wrong to judge history based on the way we think today. I think we should celebrate how far we have come and go even further. I have quotes about my grandfather who went out to fight indians in the west and he came back because he could not live with himself to put them on reservations. He said my indian friends back home would never forgive me. The question is, in my grandmothers writing she said the family motto was never forget Frenchmans Bay unfortunately it got lost and i know we were here we came on the mayflower so abi know theres a Frenchmans Bay, how would i research that . I would really love to find out what happened in Frenchmans Bay. [laughter] host linda, thank you, also her comment about judging previous history. Jill lepore thank you so much linda. I love the enthusiasm for your family history. I wish abi think you want to go to your local library and talk to a library in there about what the best method would be. Have Research Tools available through most public libraries, often partnerships with research universities, even more searching tools that will help you. I think you will get there. Dont hurry because the search will be more fun in finding out what Frenchmans Bay was all about for your family. I read in the introduction that is not the job of the historian to be a more or less. I believe that. Its our instinct in the present and thinking about the past two abthats among the chief problems of our politics. Everybodys concerned with who to blame for whats going wrong in the country right now. Personally i think spending a lot of time relitigating the past has a real limit to its utility. I once had a long conversation with undergraduates who were outraged about something they were studying, they wanted to know why i wasnt more enraged about it and i said, what you think your Carbon Footprint is today . [indiscernable] it got to the point of just aristocratic methods they had done more damage to the planet and the day after that point then the person they were indicting in the historical record had done in his lifetime. We will be judged by future generations on having destroyed the earth. Theres very little thats worse than what weve done in our lifetime. My generation in particular. Which makes it i think a very extraordinary act of audacity to condemn people, which not to say we are not involved in thinking about right and wrong and how to remedy wrong because thats our obligation as people, thats part of our duty to one another. Thats a good reason to study the past but to dig into the past, the humility, people are not actually better in the present. We have institutions that do a better job of protecting one another from our worst impulses. We have rights. We have basic states that protect those rights, we have constitutions that make it much better to be a human being, a flawed creature that today than in many previous centuries. But unless we protect those institutions we will just be as wrong to one another as people in previous generations. Host new york burning came out in 2005, in that book you learn that one in four new yorkers at one point was an enslaved person. We also learn about how wall street was built and founded. Neil, beachwood ohio, please go ahead. Caller i have two related questions, i believe i saw a commentary from professor lepore abdo you believe that harvards awarding 26, 2017 an honorary doctor of war given that facebook as a reputation for being the greatest transmitter and disseminators of myths and disinformation in the world and that mr. Zuckerberg himself has a tension a we have to cut you off we are almost out of time, whats your second question . Do believe its wise for University President s to sit on corporate boards. Thank you sir. Corporate influence in colleges. Jill lepore the caller is referring to an interview i did with the chronicle of Higher Education recently, i made some remarks about corporate influence on universities. Im perfectly happy to be public with disagreeing with the universitys decision to award abim a very vocal opponent of facebook, i realize there are people out here involved in this by way of a facebook. I think there are tremendously great people who work at facebook and have a Good Intention and would like the company to not be destroying several communities and Political Institutions and civic institutions but in fact i think its the company ab [inaudible] i have quite strong views about that. It looks like to me we are at the end of our a host we have a minute you have to answer this question in one minute. From tom in venice florida, read you regularly in the new yorker, never disappointed, your great equalizer your piece on rbg was one of the best ive ever read, reminded me of something you wrote over a year ago the lingering of laws smart, moving, beautiful ab thank you for that. I just started my first stab at long a. That essay lingering of laws was one of two i ever published, im happy when people mention it because it meant a lot to me to tell that story. Good for you for starting nonfiction with these pretty big ambitious things. I dont need a ton of contemporary literary fiction, i dont read as much as i used to because i have so many writing assignments. I quite love navy smith. I read a lot of older stuff. Im kind of exhausted with nonfiction i have to read so i checked in to read a lot of a jill lepores most recent book is called if then, the history of seminomadics corporation. We appreciate your and your families time today on booktv. Jill lepore thanks so much. Host if you missed any of our last two hours, its a reair right now. ,booktv monthly indepth program with author and Harvard University history professor jill lepore, her books include the secret history of wonder woman, these truths these truths a history of the United States, the newly published, if then about the cold war origins of data mining and social minute elation. Host harvard professor jill lepore is our guest on indepth, professor lepore, before we get to the substance of your book, as a historian, what is your contemporary view of how our world is going to be viewed . Jill lepore