Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Public Policy Centers Roundtable 20180122

Artificial intelligence, virtuallyality, 360degree cameras and enhanced selfdriving cars. Next, on American History tv, representatives from a variety of museums and history and Public Policy centers on the importance of these institutions and their methods for ed kuwaiting and offering information to the public. This is an hour and a half. We can begin the session. Welcome to all of you who have weathered the snow and ice to be here this afternoon. Welcome to this panel, history and Public Policy center, sponsored by the National History center. Im nick mueller, president and ceo emeritus of the National World War Ii Museum in new orleans and before that enjoyed a 32career at university of new orleans. I will say more about that after all the panelists are introduced. Were going to take a little bit of a different approach today. Rather than having each panelist stand up and talk about their respective centers and institutes, we are going to have a series of questions i will go over in just a moment and they will each respond in a few moments each. Well weave in the work their centers are doing in the course of their remarks. So im going to introduce very briefly each of the panelists. Perhaps you can raise your hand as i mention your name. For audience here and many more who are not affected by the weather watching on cspan. Thank you, cspan for covering this panel which is being telecast. First, brian vella, is the Dorothy Danforth professor at the Miller Center at the university of virginia, johns hopkins, ph. D. Author of numerous books, associational state in 2015, government out of sight in 2009. The Miller Center is a nonpartisan affiliate of the university of virginia specializing in president ial scholarship, Public Policy and political history striving to apply the lessons of history and civil discourse to the nations most pressing contemporary governance challenge. Avi green, who cannot be with us. I was caught by the snow in boston. Avi, if you are watching, we miss you. He is the executive director of the Scholars Strategy Network and using research to improve Public Policy and strengthen democracy. Well need to hear more from him in other ways. Rob havers, sitting here, raise a hand, is president of the george c. Marshall foundation in lexington, virginia, a cambridge ph. D. Previously serving as the executive director of the National Churchill museum. The Marshall Foundation is a nonpartisan policy dedicated to general marshall, u. S. Second of state, the man that won the war and won the peace after world war ii. The foundation emphasizes the Leadership Qualities of marshall and his exemplary character through educational programs, archives and Research Libraries and museums. Dane kennedys the elmer lewis kaiser professor of history and International Affairs at George Washington university and author of author of five books and director of the National History center, which is sponsoring this panel today. The National History center is an affiliate of the american historical associated graded to reinforce the Critical Role of history and historical knowledge, the role that history and historical knowledge play in public Decision Making and civic life. The center facilitates historical inquiry and debate and ensures that scholarship and knowledge of professional historians are disseminated to the public effectively. David n. Meyers, to my left, is sadie and ludwick khan chair in jewish history. Columbia ph. D. Author of three books in the field of modern, jewish, and intellectual cultural history. He has been a fellow for advanced j advanced judaic studies. He was director of the ucla center, jewish studies. And jason steinhaur, a noted public historian, over 15 years of experience, very diverse experience in museums, archives, government, academia, the library of congress, the New York Historical society, and the museum of jewish heritage as well as rock n roll hall of fame. I like that one. All of those are important. Lapage Center Brings historical scholarship and perspective to bear on contemporary global affairs. For myself, my area was european history at the university of new orleans, ph. D. And masters from university of north carolina. After 32 years as professor, dean, vice chancellor and last post was president of our research and technology park, Steven Ambrose and i, some of you may remember, the late Steven Ambrose, decided that the country needed a National Museum. So we set about in 1990 to do that. I became chairman, ceo and ultimately the president of the National Museum which got a new mission from congress. We are now the National World War Ii Museum in the city of new orleans serving members and people from all over the country with almost 700,000 visitors. We will talk more about them. There is also a new institute for the study of war and democracy. Any world war ii media and Education Center which is part of the story about what we are going to talk about just here in a moment. So there are mikes up here for the audience as well as for cspan. As i ask questions, well go down the row and get answers from our various presentors of a couple minutes each. Ill play the whip hand and try to keep everybodys answers short so everybody gets a chance to respond. The general approach we are taking today is to look at the broader question of who cares what the historian has to say, after all . How do we stay relevant and become more so perhaps . Most of the centers and institutes that we know of today enjoyed their first appearance in late 19th century as various scholars began to develop research endeavors, Specialized Research endeavors and higher educations largely to a scholarly audience. Todays historians face a very, very different environment than that judicial idea of an institute or a center at the university and sometimes not at universities. Today, we are in a world where many of our perspective audiences, people who might consume what we have to say, live in an online world, reflecting 21st Century Technology and communications. We find these traditional models that have grown up over the last century or so living with a very dynamic, crowded, public space where messages emanate from many, many sources and those sources are amplified by the powers by digitization. The question is, for our panelists, a couple of parts to this first question. Is anyone listening . Is anyone listening, or does anyone care what our centers and institutes are doing or in my case museums . I think we can all agree that we are living in an attentiondeficit society with political divisions and online chatter of enormous proportions compared to what existed 25 years ago, certainly a century ago. The first part of the question for all of you is, how do historians in their centers and institutes represented here break through the noise and provide context and historical insight for Public Policy and other critical public issues . Breaking through the noise is the first part of the question. Who are your target audiences . Are they listening to you . Rob, well start with you. Good afternoon, everybody. Pleasure to be here. The george c. Marshall foundation, as nick said, located in lex inningtoington, been there since 1964. General marshall was a graduate of that institution. Prior that, in washington, d. C. , from 1953. We have sat in lexington working on somewhat the internal part of marshalls life. Four volumes of an authorized biography, seven volumes of the edited papers of george c. Marshall completed in 1987 and just in 2016. A lot of time and effort. Really, those great scholarly endeavors are very emblematic of the world nick alluded to, the old world. How do you engage the young about general marshall, all he did as a general or secretary of state when the first point of entry is perhaps the four very substantial volumes of that authorized biography . How are you breaking through . We are doing it in a number of ways, trying to connect the historical marshall with the present. There are all kinds of questions that arrive at the moment, the role of the United States in particular at the moment, in the modern world. The end of that postwar consensus that has been with us since 1945. General marshall is at the core of the heart of that with the marshall plan, secretary of state. Through lectures and short videos, through blogs that speak to the big news events, we find that we have growing traction, virtual traction, and that people comment on our blog posts that connect either our paper collections, three dimensional connections with the big events of the modern world and then the next step is to draw them in person to the building. You often have to want to go to lexington, virginia. It is not as far as you might think. I drove from there this morning. You have to make an effort to come and visit us. Lectures in the evening and lunchtime build on that growing virtual presence. Primarily, you are focused on getting people to the Marshall Center and thats your primary way of reaching your audiences. We are trying to get people to come and visit us on site. We are also endeavoring to take these lectures and programs out beyond lexington. Dane . First of all, to you initial question. That has to do with are we reaching an audience and how . I think we all need to sort of recognize and i think we do recognize on some level that there is an innate interest in history. This is something tla hat is rey foundational, this fascination with genealogy and how people are tracing their roots genetically, the powerful influence that certain History Museums have such as the one that nick has helped to found in new orleans. So the good news is that historians are speaking in some sense to a receptive audience who recognize that history has some kind of value. One of the challenges, however, that face those of us who work in the academic world, as historians, is how to reach that audience in a way that is compelling to them and yet also reflects the kinds of Specialized Knowledge that we have. Part of this is a matter of framing a use of language and understanding of how history is understood and conceptualized by different groups and different audiences. Let me turn to the second part of your question which has to do with the National History center itself, which i direct. It is located here in washington, d. C. It is an affiliate of the American Historical Association. Our mission is to bring history and historians the broader public and policy conversations. No better place to do that in some sense than washington, d. C. We focus on particular audiences. We are not trying to reach the sort of general audience that would go to the World War Ii Museum or people interested in genealogy. We are focused first and foremost on capitol hill, the policy community in washington, d. C. And one of the ways we do this is through a congressional briefing series we have run for five or six years now, which identifies topics that are facing congress currently and trying to give at least staffers and occasionally congressmen, themselves, who attend these briefings, some sense of the Historical Context and how understanding that historical background can be a benefit in terms of defining and shaping current policy issues. We have a weekly lecture series we do in conjunction with the wilson center, which brings historians to talk about work that they have recently done that has some kind of policy dimension to it. Finally, we also are trying to develop a program, which brings some of those techniques in terms of congressional briefings and how they are done. Producing a briefing paper and so on, to the classroom. Developing a particular set of techniques for allowing history teachers to better communicate to their students and get their students to more actively enganl in t engage in the use of history to understand the past and have a perspective on the present. So you are focusing major effort on the policy briefings to influential the staffers to have a better understanding of history and have a larger impact on the hill in congress and teacher impact. Those are three good areas. David . Sure. Thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to be here. I am here today wearing two institutional hats. The first is as the inaugural director of the Luskin Center for historic policy, a new Research Center established at ucla. I am also the president and ceo of the center for jewish history in new york, which has a very substantial public history role as well. I should say that the center, the Luskin Center, arose out of considerable demand from multiple constituencies, from students, faculty colleagues as well as from the general public. We introduce a greater degree of historical knowledge and perspective into policy. This is something we feel we can do at the university, specially in the current moment. I think this is really important to take stock of, nick, the moment we inhabit. Yes, it is a time of attention deficit. Yes, we live in a mediacrazed world in which the new cycle s s reduced to seconds, not hours. At the same time, i sense and my center is a reflection of this, that people want to know, how did we get to where we are . How did we follow this path to where we are . In a certain sense, i think of this moment as the moment of history where people demand a historical accounting to explain the current state of Political Affairs in the United States, something we mentioned briefly. How did the post world war ii order that was such a Stable Foundation for much of the western world seem to unravel so quickly . How did we achieve the current state or descend into a state of income inequality to the extent we have. It seems to me that many people are seeking deeper and more profound answers to these central questions that are very much a function of the moment. It isnt necessarily the case that this questioning means that as they famously said minerva has spread its wings and we have reached an end of history but it is a moment in which there is a demand for more historical texture and perspective. I think it is no accident that this gathering takes place with new and old centers devoted to the intersection of history and policy. What we try to do is operate both within the university and beyond. One of the things that we aim to do at the Luskin Center is to modify the culture of the academy to make students and faculty more receptive to historically informed work that addresses questions of contemporary relevance. To make that a legitimate and regular form of historical inquiry and discourse. So this is one of the things that we aim to do within the university that we respect will radiate out. From that, our plans are to produce historically informed policy papers that reach actual decisionmakers at the local, regional and National Levels. Thats exciting. Just chime in here too that to reinforce what you say about that, there is a thirst for history out there. The National World War Ii Museum is some evidence of that. We are now approaching 6 million visitors since we were founded 17 years ago. This is sport of a supply side museum. It wasnt demand driven. It wasnt like the nation was clamoring for a dday museum or a World War Ii Museum. Some 17,000 visitors come to new orleans, 85 from out of state. Half of them say the only reason they are coming is to see this museum. There is a thirst for great history, welltold, wellpresented. We are ranked number two by trip adviser, the largest travel database in the world and number two in the United States and the world. Who is the other company . Metropolitan museum of arts is number one and most of the smithsonian and other museums are behind us. What goes up, comes down. The good news is, people are interested in history. We have conferences and they have 500, 600 people. They come from 8 00 nin the morning. They are enthusiasts that want good history, from 8 00 until 6 00 in the evening with breaks to talk with authors and sign books. They are there because we are making history relevant and interesting to them. We are thinking about outreach and how to get the word out. We founded a new entity for the study of war and democracy, which has 12 historians in it, half of them with ph. D. S, developing content and overseeing our exhibits and a world war ii media and Education Center that will go beyond the walls. Jason, lets turn to you and get your response here on this. Ill try this microphone. Can everyone hear me . I apologize. Im fighting a cold. I am really pleased to be here. I wanted to make one observation. Initially, we all look pretty similar. One thing that will help us moving forward is to ensure there is some diversity at the head of these institutions we create. I hope in the future when we do these type of panels, we can have women historians and persons of color and people of all genders represented. I think that will only help us ensuring we are relevant to a generation that is up and coming and increasingly diverse and looking for that similar type of face in leadership roles to inspire them and make them interested in career choices in fields. I also want to do a very sort of historian type thing here and challenge a couple of the assumptions that we are working under. I was struck when thinking about this panel and the things posed about the notion of attention deficit, and it occurred to me there are a lot of things we Pay Attention to pretty consistently. We certainly Pay Attention to our Current Administration pretty consistently. We are paying attention to russia and north korea pretty consistently. People seem to pay a lot of attention to game of thrones which i have never understood and College Football never seems to get old either. Attention deficit, i think we have the capacity for a longterm attention to various things. Those things just have to interest us. History doesnt interest all people. So for those of us in these roles, our challenge is not only to engage people that are already interested in history, as dane said, that segment of the population that already does have that sort of curiosity and fundamental drive to learn more about the past but also find ways to get people in the door that may not be interested in history at all. There is a sizeable amount of people out there that fall into that category. So i also how do you do that . Well, whats pleasing me about this conversation, this is actually a conversation about history communication, which if you know about me or have followed me at all on twitter, this is sort of a pet project of mine. He is live tweeting. I am looking at it. How we get people interested in things is not only about subject matter but about how we communicate, where we communicate and who does the communicating. All of those things are not necessarily taught or engrained into the history right now. We teach history students how to re searc research, analyze and write books. We dont always teach them to be skilled communicators and take advantage of new digital programs as they come out and understanding media literacy, of how to speak on camera, of how to do a twominute byte on msnbc. It is something that myself and many colleagues have been working at the great into the history professor. How we communicate, where we communicate and who does the communicating, that has an impact on the interest level. That brings me to the Lepage Center, which i am the first director of, was created in 2016. We have only been doing programming for the past five month. I have metrics about influence and reaching people. It is still probably too early to really tell. I will say that the idea of the center baked into its existence is this notion that you dont have to come to the Lepage Center to be part of it. Unlike whats happening at the Marshall Foundation, for example, you can be part of the Lepage Center anywhere in the world. You can access or blogs, listen to our podcast and connect with us on social media. You can watch our events through live streaming. We are pretty much taking the model that the Lepage Center has multiple nodes and multiple entry points and you can be a part of our community and exit it innocent. You will always be welcome. It is sort of a different conception of a center. We are not a building. We dont have a prime office. We do have a room on villa novas campus. Our action doesnt happen there. Our action happens out in cyberspace an everywhere. We are trying to apply these principles of history communication to the building from the center from the ground up. We actually do have two history communication fellows at the Lepage Center. The first two anywhere. They are underygraduate student and graduate students that help is communicate historical scholarship through this new medium. I want to come back to the issue of the social media. Brian, do you want to finish up with the first round of questions . I will try to see if there is anything left to say. Answering the question of how do we breakthrough the noise and how do we know we are doing that . I know that everybody on this panel believes that the first order of business for breaking through the noise is producing and delivering firstrate scholarship. We so much believe that. We havent mentioned it that much. I think it is very important. One center that im connected with at the university of virginia, the jefferson scholars, runs the National Fellowship program, which has funded over 150 postopts who work specifically on understanding politics in the United States from a Historical Perspective. We work very hard to get these first rate scholars who are now tenured at yale and northwestern and michigan to pay special attention to the policy implications that comes out of their history, whether it is on early republic or on deregulation in the 1970s. Paying attention to producing the kind of scholars who can answer questions that policymakers ask is extraordinarily important. While most of these former fellows are in tenure track or tenured at universities, a number of them go directly into Public Policy and for sure they influence people around them just to give you two examples. A former fellow works at the National Security council, a former fellow was assistant secretary of the air force. They have done that with ph. D. S in history and political science. Policymakers care about that. Second, i am a cohost on back story, which is a podcast that tries to understand the history behind the headlines. We interview firstrate scholars based on the topic we are looking at. So we might interview a ph. D. Student who is working on a dissertation or we might interview a very wellknown scholar about a book that she wrote 20 years ago. This is a way of injecting firstrate scholarship into the public sphere. We have very good metrics on that. Our podcast is downloaded 90,000 times every week. It has been extraordinarily successful at bringing firstrate scholarship to a broad, public audience. Finally, im involved with the Miller Center at the university of virginia which really tries to target specific policymakers, looking at how do we close the income inequality gap as was mentioned before, putting together conferences and inviting people down to charlottesville. We have an advantage. People, it turns out, like to get out of washington, d. C. , inviting folks down and spending a day or a couple of days actually exposing them to the deeper histories of the policy that they worked on. I want to address the issue of diversity as well. That goes back to the Fellowship Program and our podcast. Our podcast started out as three old white guys. We still have two old white guys, myself and ed airs. Unfortunately, peter onus, our third old white guy, got so old he wanted to retire. We were upset but we brought in nathan connolly, one of the leading historians of urban america, specially after post world war ii, who is an africanamerican middleaged man. He would call himself young and joann freeman, who is a historian of the early republic at yale. I absolutely can tell you by changing the mix, im addressing jasons point, by changing the mix of our hosts, ed peter and i thought we were so cool, we had this diversity thing down. By changing the actual mix of who the hosts are, we have changed the tone of the show. Thats something i am very proud of. The other thing is the Fellowship Program has attracted a majority, women fellows and a significant proportion of underrepresented minorities. When people, for instance, at the pbs news hour call me and say, can you recommend somebody on x, i more often than not can recommend an underrepresented minority, more often than not, i can recommend a woman and this really changes the faces of the scholars that appear on public television, on public radio. Those are all excellent contributions to the discussion here. I would say the museum perspective, we have some of the issues of diversity from the point of view of the scholars and historians perhaps that work in the institute. However, we have hired some young women and masters in public history and another one with a ph. D. And worked in french and german resources and film and propaganda and world war ii. So some of it comes from historians but in the museum, the diversity is also handled by our exhibits themselves. We pay close attention to telling the story of the africanamerican experience in world war ii, the japanese american in interment camps and hispanics in world war ii and integrate that into the overall story and how we are fighting two fascist, racist regimes with a segregated military. We bring those stories in. The visitors then engage with us on those issues and as well talk about them in our conferences and in our symposium. The variety of ways to get at that issue, i think we all have to do a better job of the people that are doing the podcasts and who are in these kind of programs at the American Historical Association and in our own conferences. I think we are all working on that. We all have work to do and we are all going to get better. Lets come back to the social media. The podcast is kind of interesting. We do some of that. We do a good bit on facebook and twitter too. Let me see what anybody is doing here either through your own institute or through your Larger University that you reside within. In the case of dane, it is within the American Historical Association. Are you reaching these younger audiences and millennials through the social media at all . Do we care . Can we do more there . I certainly think we can do more. The subject of our organization is george c. Marshall, who is a dead white guy, albeit a very accomplished dead white guy. With younger people, specially, we have to explain what it was he did, how he did it, and why he is still of interest and relevance today. The method of doing that can vary considerably. We are, as well as trying to get people to lexington, we are trying to reach out beyond lexington to anybody that may know of marshall and put marshall, the man in context with these big events. Podcast is something we are going to extend a very early explo exploratory route with in the future. There are so many platforms, it is a challenge to see which work and deliver the biggest bang for your buck. Im going to turn this around a bit since i organized the panel and direct it to the people that i think can speak to it more effectively. The National History center, we do some twitter and have a facebook account, bla, bla, bla. I wouldnt say we are particularly good at it. In part, thats because we have limited resources and, in part, it is because of the audience we are trying to reach, which isnt that broad younger audience for particular reasons i can go into in greater detail. I think that people like jason and brian have developed some real expertise in the use of these new medias and can speak much more intelligently about how they can be brought to bear in our field. I am happy to turn the microphone over, if you will. Well, i would just say on the podcast, we were on 200 public radio stations, traditional public radio. We were very proud of that. All of my colleagues over the age of 55 were delighted by that. We made a decision very consciously to pull out of public radio and create the show as a podcast and the number one objective we had was reaching a younger, more diverse audience. From all the metrics we have, we are doing that. It didnt change overnight. It was a real risk. All my friend who are over the age of 55 say, how come you are not doing the radio show anymore. It really, in my opinion, has been worth it, to do that. I do think that by shifting and you dont have to make such a radical change. We decided to create this as a podcast. This would get off topic, so i wont go into detail. It turns out thinking about a show as a podcast is quite different than thinking about it as a 52minute nprlike show with three breaks. It has given us a lot more flexibility. It has allowed us to take on more issues, to be a little more conversational. Typically, about how long is each of your podcasts . 52 minutes with three breaks. Im kidding. Most of our podcasts are 40 minutes to 45 minutes. The point is, they vary. You get a warning. You get complaints that you wouldnt think of. I was not done with my workout routine. The show ended. How am i going to finish my workout routine . I wrote back and said, be grateful. You got out of the gym. Thats how we know we are reaching a different kind of audience. Some feedback there . For sure. The Lepage Center is on twitter. We are live tweeting right now. I wasnt kidding. You can follow us. If you really want to reach long audiences, you have to be on snap chat. We dont have the capacity to be on snap chat right now. All these new technologies are tools. They are tools that can be used for a lot of different purposes and reasons, depending on what you are trying to achieve. For us, the Lepage Center is funny. We have history in our name. We are a center about contemporary events. We use history as a lens to examine them. For us, where our discussions about contemporary events happening, on twitter. Of all the social media we were going to embark on first, we decided to embark on twitter. We could interject some of our commentary into existing conversations that were happening around topics that were important to us. We spent this first semester of programming focusing on the issue of fake news and examining it from a Historical Perspective. This was a moment of crisis of authority. Th traditional authorities of whom we receive information. There has been a shift in who we trust. We had historical journalists interrogating this and we used twitter to interject our blog posts and other things using the appropriate ha appropriate hashtags. Facebook mide be mobetter for fe back. That might be a more appropriate medium to use. Whichever one you are using, that dictates the Communication Style and format of the message you are trying to get across, which is why history communication will never become obsolete. There are always going to be more formats that historians need to work with and deal with and figure out how to communicate our scholarship through. I want to come back to something david said to the previous question, which i admire. It is trying to change the culture on the university campus, itself. If you are looking for hundreds of thousands of young and diverse people, not to mention a captive audience, go to any university. So i think we need and should not forget that the very people we are looking toward, the future, the citizens of tomorrow, as i call them, are right with us. We often ignore that. I think specially at policy oriented institutes. I agree with that. I dont know if you want to add to that. If i may, thank you, dane, for diverting the questions about social media. Our center is not focused on amplifying at this point of this very initial stage its social Media Presence beyond the bare necessity. What we are focused on is exactly what you mentioned, which is really shifting the culture of the university and working with University Constituencies to make what is a standard assumption in many other social sciences. Namely, our work can be applied to issues of contemporary relevance. Where we are focusing is really on that cultural shift within the university at the undergraduate level, graduate level and faculty level by incentivizing graduate students and faculty to undertake Research Projects that have con temporary relevance or may end in a policy recommendation and to begin to introduce courses that expose students to the policy consequences and dim mentions of Historical Research through case study muethods. An essential compliment to all of this work in forging new horizons through social media is attending to what many of us in the university know, which is the University Community and fr within really undertaking the revolution from within. Really making the connection between past and present much more seamless. So that happens to be our way. If i could add to that, i mean, i think you see theres some synergy or correspondence here going on in terms of the interests of many of these centers. One of the things that the National History center introduced a year or two ago was a program we called the history and policy education program. Its actually a sort of framework for designing history courses that are directed towards thinking in terms of their relevance to contemporary policy. We have fortunately just received a mellon grant that will allows us to bring this on the record and workshop it at various institutions. We would love to work with you at ucla on this. Our most important audience remains the students that we have at our universities. What we have failed to do is to think more systematically about how we can teach in a way that communicates to our students the value of history or the contemporary world that theyre facing. So thats one of the issues that were trying to address as well. And thats a very similar challenge the History Museum would face, for example. Its not accidental that our Mission Statement at the National World War Ii Museum is to portray the american experience, why the war was fought, how it was won, which is actually the conduct of the war itself in europe and asia, and then finally, what does it mean today. Thats the hardest part, what are the lasting legacies. How do we answer the question to people 50 years from now, so what, what did world war ii mean, what did it matter, how did it change my life, how did it affect me. Thats what people want to understand and weve tried very hard in our exhibits to provoke people to see how it connects to them. We have also done surveys and focus groups to identify between the ages of 18 and 80. Theres 34 Million People in america who are interested in world war ii because of some personal connection. So theres a builtin relevance. We got to go out and find those people. Now, going back to social media and facebook, just to show you in the museum world, the gorilla in the marketplace is the American Museum of Natural History and they have more than 1 million facebook likes, just so you all know what the hill is you got to climb, and nearly 400,000 twitter followers. Were not doing so bad because weve got great leadership in our Marketing Department and our current president and ceo, steven watson, has been working and getting our board to invest in beyond the brick and mortar. So some six years ago the museum board and our staff agreed that we would digitize everything in our collection, 50,000 photographs, all the artifacts, create Management Software programs to navigate 10,000 oral histories, to pull them up under your desks or wherever you are, whatever computer you use. So weve been moving toward the end of the brick and mortar phase but thats what every university and institution has to face too. Some years ago, it took Hurricane Katrina before i hit myself in the head and said why did it take a hurricane for me to realize. You have to do the same thing with the museum. You have to reach out beyond the brick and mortar and really get the people where they live and to penetrate through facebook and social media. How do we respond on issues of Public Policy among this group here for example. Is it up to us on issues of the day that are contemporary issues like the Confederate Monuments being taken down, or do we say like we did, thats not our war. Thats a civil war issue. So do we organize this, do we do this on an ad hoc basis . Is there a need for historians to assemble centers to find a more coordinated response to issues of the day . How do we do that . Is anybody thinking about that in your own centers . Ill maybe start by saying that one of the things that we decided we wanted to do at the lusken center is to convene a meeting of various individuals engaged in work at the intersection of history and policy which were calling the history and policy summit to just take stock of the lay of the land, whats out there, whos doing this work with new vigor and attention. We want to really see what the possibilities for collaboration are. I would say in our case, we understand that we cant be everything to everyone. We want to begin by focusing on local and regional issues where we already have contacts to policy makers, where weve already produced work that has reached policymakers and in fact made a difference, while at the same time were also supporting research that deals with both national and international policyrelated questions. So we think this is a good moment to bring people together and i know the National History center is also doing that and we will do it together with them to see what kinds of work we can join forces on and what each of us does independently. I would say that if one of the outcomes of this work of convening is to create a formal or informal history lobby that can operate at multiple levels from local to international, then that will be a very significant chooechachievement. Thats what we think the moment demands of us. Speaking on behalf of the World War Ii Museum id like to say we would like to join in that effort. We think its a great endeavor and worthwhile. Jason, you wanted to Say Something . For us this gets to the heart of our discussions about strategy and how we were going to operate. We made a conscious decision to not be reactive to headlines. There are a lot of good sources for Quick Response to breaking news including the new made by history blog which is wonderful. If youve not checked it out, its published by the washington post, run by Nicole Hemmer and Katie Brunell and brian rosenwald. You know, since its published through the post, they have a mandate to be reactive to things that are popping up in the news on a daily basis. Trump says something, they put up a piece that responds. Something happens with the confederate statue, they put up a piece that responds. Thats hard work. Its really hard to constantly be sort of reacting to the news cycle and putting up new, fresh pieces every day. We didnt feel like we had the ba bandwidth to do that so we took the approach that were going to try to look for issues that are sort of bubbling below the surface and do more of a deep dive, longterm examination of them. I had mentioned the fake news. Another issue that weve been doing programming around and doing blog posts around is the issue of endless war. So weve been in contact with iraq and afghanistan for the past 17 years. My fellow who i mentioned at the Lepage Center, her memory only goes back as far as 2001. So for the entire time shes been alive that she can remember, weve been in iraq and afghanistan. We wanted to look at the issue of endless war and think about how we got to this moment and what historians could teach us about how weve arrived at this place. While we were doing this series of programming, things like the ambush in niger came up and decisions about afghanistan came up but we resisted the urge to throw up a block post right away or get on tv and try to talk about it right away. We stuck to the plan of addressing this underlying issue. We feel thats our contribution to the ecosystem and hopefully it balances out some of the other things that brian is doing and other people. To sort of go back to the National Fellowship program, Nicole Hemmer was a National Fellow and shes a phd from columbia writing a very nice monograph but it was when she was a National Fellow that we put her in touch with people who knew how to blog and write opeds and thats how she got started. Brian is a phd whos writing a book about the impact of talk radio. But the point im making is a lot of this goes back to the scholarship itself. If we can just think if we can nur ture that scholarship ad encourage people to do scholarship that sheds light on politics and Public Policy, then i think its pretty easy to figure out the techniques to reach either policymakers or the public. Now, having an impact on the public or policymakers, thats a whole different kettle of fish, but we can at least try to get that first rate scholarship in the hands, on the ipads of policymakers and informed public. And i know everyone on this panel is doing that. I just want to speak on behalf of the museum world and American History museum and Holocaust Museum and our museum. In our case, we fundamentally believe that great exhibits, great conferences, great programs and all the tools you use to get out on social media depend first and foremost on having great scholarship and the best minds on World War Ii History in our case and its aftermath at the table in designing every square inch of on exhibit to tell a story in an authentic way. We have had from the last 15 years a group of president ial counsellors with people like rick atkins and don miller and rich frank. We have a core of people who are kind of an Advisory Group that help look at us when were still in the scope work stage and trying to shape a story for the future, be sure its correct, and then the new institute for the study of war and democracy, weve hired as our senior professor, rob za tchettino to at everything we do and also to have that network of the Advisory Groups to examine the history that we are trying to tell. To come back to the point though of a moment ago, the issue of history as news, i mean, our new world war ii meeting and Education Center, were thinking about a podcast around the idea of world war ii news. Well, theres news on world war ii every day. Somebody is either using or misusing, whether youre talking about the munich agreement or the good war or whatever, the atomic bomb. I mean, the justifications for munich were used by every president going into iraq, afghanistan, comparing it to pearl harbor which is a lousy comparison. I dont think truman even had any button. No, much less the biggest button. In fact, what he had to do was really say no. Everybody was going to use everything they had to win that war. But those are issues that are current today and as we talk about loosely now about the button to begin another nuclear war, whats the role of historians who react . How do we react to those big issues of the day . Youve taken a more deliberate role, jason. Are there other ways that some of you are exploring . I can speak about the congressional briefing series for example, and that is much more directly reactive to events as they occur. For example, shortly after trump came to office and began to sign a series of executive orders, we organized a briefing on capitol hill on the history of executive orders. How unusual was this, how can we understand it the context withi which this occurred. Shortly after the events in charlottesville, we organized a briefing on confederate monum t monumen monuments, the history, how did we win and come to be and how does this help us to understand what role they play in public memory. We have done briefings on historical parallels to the zika crises when that was at its height and congress was debating funding for that. I could go on. For us, in fact timeliness is absolutely essential for this congressional Briefing Program because its hitting it at that moment that makes it useful in fact to congressional staffers and others, as well as the broader policy community in washington d. C. I went to one of your briefings on Civil Military relations given the Current Administration of generals. It was an outstanding briefing. Its a way to bring good history to and understanding to staffers who are trying to advise their senators and congressmen and Congress Women on how to react to policies and issues with regard to that. Anybody else want to comment . Yes, rob. We dont have anything as formal as what dane does, but we have certainly seen and i would echo what dane said about i think fundamentally people have an interest in history, where they came from, how we got to where we are today. If you take the view and its debatable and hard evidence perhaps is difficult to come by, that history is not taught as well as it once was or history isnt being taught at all, more and more people are looking to organizations such as ours, the Marshall Foundation, because of its longevity and association with general marshall as being something of an authority. Ill get phone calls or the librarian will get phone calls, well, i saw x, y or something on the news. Did it really happen in this fashion . Are they accurate . So we seem to be, without a lot of effort, moving into this area of being some sort of authority on events for which we hold the papers or which general marshall was involved. How we do that in a more intentional fashion such as dane, thats another one of our challenges. There certainly seems to be an opportunity for organizations like ours in the public sphere where once perhaps this sounds trite where history was once better known, there is an opportunity for us now to fill that vacuum a little bit, and were thinking somewhat intentionally about how we might do that and build on what weve done in the past. Anyone else on that point . I would just say, i guess its more aspirational than a reflection of current activity of our center, but it seems to me to go back to this moment, this moment of potential renewed interest in history but also this moment of tremendous turmoil and upheaval the world over, one of the things i think historians can bring to bear on the current conversation is really a textured sense of the threat to democracy. Im always reminded of the litmus test proposed by the late great yale political scientist who proposed i think three criteria of warning for the erosion of democracy, endorsement of violence curtailing the rights of ones political opponents and denying the legitimacy of the democratically elected regime. I think thats a good place to start. It seems to me both in our own country and the world over that historians have the potential to make nuanced analogies that can be of importance as warning signs to the potential erosion of democracy really the world over from this country to the middle east. That seems to me a function that we together might want to take on. I couldnt agree with you more on that. At our museum, as we move into this last pavilion which addresses what it means today, what does world war ii mean today, were looking at the last 75 years in the major legacies of war and we feel like we are at that Inflection Point and that this pavilion will bring us right into the center of perhaps one of the biggest debates in our country and even around the world as nationalist and populist movements are growing up around the country. All the alliances are dissolving which goes back to fdr which you all know in the state of the Union Address in january of 41 long before pearl harbor where he established the freedoms that he thought would be the foundation for our war aims. In fact, he did embed that in the Atlantic Charter and the post world order with the united nations, the nurnburg trials and we gave democracy to the countries we just defeated. You can document the advance of democracy and freedom with americas leadership over the last 75 years, not always perfectly, but nevertheless its been the consistent framework and without necessarily buying into the full thesis of the good war, we can certainly say the world ended up better off in 45 as a result of the allied victory than would have been if the racist regimes of germany and japan had prevailed. So we have to enter as historians into these larger debates, it seems to me, and we are right at this Inflection Point right now where National History center and everybody at this table has a way to enter into that debate and engage populations, whether its through social media or coming to your centers. Yeah, i just wanted to say that im really actually struck by the sort of complimentary strengths that our centers pulled together. We dont each have to do everythi everything. There are ways to Work Together where we can focus on our strengths and amplify each others work. So we promote stuff from the Miller Center, we promote the congressional briefings. And youve helped made by history. Yes. Im on the Editorial Board of made by history. We can sort of help each other not only in collaborating on joint programming but also just in sort of amplifying existing programming that weve sort of honedrefined. We would love to continue supporting what the National History center has done because its fantastic. As david pointed out, that ability to reach both at the National Level and down to the regional and local level, i think automatic ll of us who had the history of the United States understand the power of organizations that can operate at a National Level but have the freedom in a decentralized way to operate at a local and state level. This is just a tiny, tiny piece of the picture sitting up here, but i do think we have a tremendous opportunity to be effective in the world if we put our minds to it. Dane . In organizing this panel, i really had two agendas in mind. One was to bring all of us together and to sort of communicate with one another about what were doing and the way in which we intersect and can strengthen one anothers operations, and i think in that context one of the future projects id like to see the National History Center Launch is perhaps a website that links all of our operations and provides the kind of if not clearing house, a way in which we can more effectively understand what everyone is doing and communicate with one another. Theres so much activity going on right now. The other agenda actually has to do with all of you in the audience because as david said nearing t near the beginning and i thought it was an important point, we need to modify the culture of the academy and the fact that youre here i think reflects the fact that you have an interest in doing this. I think that interest has been reflected in the extraordinary outpouring of activity, opeds, interviews and so on by his t r historians in response, for example, to the charlottesville crises, the Confederate Monument issue. The nha with its members solicited contributions that they had made to this broader conversation, and they get hundreds of responses by historians at the local level who were interviewed by their local newspapers or were interviewed by the local television stations or what have you. That, too, i think speaks to this hunger among historians at this moment, at this Inflection Point, on the value of a Historical Perspective on the kinds of challenges and issues we face today. So thats our other major agenda as i see it in this process. David, go ahead. I just want to offer up an historical organizatibservation which is part confession, which is that this enhanced sense of the relevance and utility of history that i think our institutions and individual efforts reflect is directly related to a set of historical circumstances. In particular, one can choose many, but the one im thinking of is the economic collapse of 20082009 which fundamentally altered the landscape of the marketplace for historians and really added a sense of urgency to the demand for relevance in what we do. It also made clear to us, for those of us who teach both undergraduate and graduate students, that the same opportunities that might have been available to a previous generation were not going to be available to that current generation and that we needed to think of multiple career pathways. I think what is good about that moment of crises is it allowed us to think of new avenues in which we can infuse historical knowledge and perspective into domains of life where previously we hadnt thought. I think that crises induced a relevance of history and in a sense liberated us from thinking that the only worthwhile career outcome was an r1 research university. So thats how i often think of this moment of relevance, as in part induced by that crises of 20082009. I think thats an excellent segue way to one concluding comment that i would make and then well open it up to questions from the audience as well. Im reminded of another Inflection Point in history back in the 16th century. M theres a great line that luther slammed the door of the monastery behind him and walked out of the marketplace with the german language and addition to the bible. Historians some four centuries later, there are always these inflection moments in history as a broad sweep of the major occurrence in history. Historians do have that opportunity to step into that moment and find ways to collaborate and to have to join forces in ways that we can to have a louder voice and to reach more people who are interested in good history and solidly based understandings of how we got to where we are and where we might be going based on the decisions and Public Policies that get articulated. So let me just open up to questions. We still have about 20, 25 minutes i think. For the tv audience, i guess ill just have to repeat the questions. I think we can hear your questions from wherever you might have them and ill try to repeat them so our Television Audience can hear them as well. Do we have some questions . Yes. [inaudible] let me just rephrase the question quickly for our Television Audience. On the question of communications and the importance of communications and communicating scholarship and what are we doing in our universities and graduate programs to train young historians in verbal, rhetorical skills, media skills to bring their history to broader publics. Im thrilled to say that weve already had one successful history communication course taught at the graduate level at the university of michigan amher amherst, graduate seminar. I think it was 8 or 10 people. It was highly successful. Then there are three more history communication courses coming online in 2018 at universities across the country. The siyllabus for that course came workshops held in 2016 that had about 30 historians, journalists, skcience communicators coming together to build the curriculum. There was then a followup workshop in washington d. C. In august of 2016 that really put the meat on the bones of that and actually spelled out week by week how that course would unfold. You can find that course at historycommunication. Com, our website for the history communication movement. Any and all of you who are in universities and would like to bring that course to your Home University, we would encourage you to visit that website, grab the syllabus. You can also grab the syllabus for the umass course that was taught last year and adapt it to your Home University in bringing in specialists and scholars that you have in your area. But we would love to see this grow and continue to expand to other universities across the country. As i mentioned, we also now have history communication fellows at the Lepage Center aat v at the Lepage Center aat v villan. I think thats another great avenue for training, giving students on the job experience, putting together a podcast, working with you on media, presenting things in five or tenminute chunks. I think the movement is growing. Thats another and i think there are a number of universities around the country that now have masters degrees in public history for people going into the fields of museums and libraries and other Government Agency and research institutes, curating and collections and so forth. So that would be a welcome addition into many of those Masters Programs. I know the university of new orleans has a Masters Program and public togethhistory tied tr with its military program. Any questions or comments . Yes. [inaudible] theres about 3,000 of them out there. We just got to execute some reforms and they have too much of the population there to leave it all. Do yall want to add something there . Id like to say thats one of my predecessors at the Marshall Foundation so great to have you. It can be a challenge. The curricular demands of High School History teaching, theres often very little opportunity, certainly in public schools. A little more latitude in private schools but it can be a challenge capturing that historical interest and whetting that appetite with good scholarship early on is what is needed. One of the things we do is create online resources. In the midst of our examination of fake news and false information, we actually developed an online resource called six steps to historical literacy. You can find it on our website and also on our twitter account. Its aimed at High School Students and High School Teachers in fact, and its a rubric, a matrix, for identifying and distinguishing good history online from bad. So is this article copied from wikipedia, is this actually written by a historian, is this making a historical argument. We created this resource, put it online, and then we got it into the hands of teachers. I had a meeting with the philadelphia public schools, got it into their resource set for history teachers across the Philadelphia School system. Also got it into the hands of some teachers in other places. They love it. They love it. In fact, i got an email from a teacher who told me that they watched some history videos on youtube and then they used that resource that we created as a guide to determine whether they could trust the videos or not. So i think the way that we found to make inroads in that is to create easy resources for teachers that they can bring into the classroom. When i say easy, to the point that was just made, it has to be super easy because they are overloaded. Theyve got a ton of things on their plate. Theyre understaffed, underresourced. Six steps to historical literacy, a onepage online resource can be printed off, stuck into a folder, used in the classroom. Thats the way weve found success. Albert, we just discovered inadvertently at back story and at the Virginia Foundation for the humanities which houses back story that we have a lot of High School History teachers who are fans and they write into us and so we have developed the very kind of lesson plans for some of our shows that jason was talking about, simple, straight forward. They kind of came to us and we said, oh, who knew . Well, these history teachers are listening and they report back. We did a show on hamilton. I think that was our most successful with High School History teachers and High School Students. We actually interviewed some of the students and the High School Teacher that taught this in the high school, we interviewed him on back story and i know that a lot of High School Teachers use that particular episode. I will say at least as far as the National World War Ii Museum is concerned, were doing quite a lot in that area. For the last five or six years, we have promoted teachers and students in k12. At the teacher level we have about three or four summer institutes that are nationally competitive and fully subsidized for about 30 teachers every year from the social sciences and history from around the country to come and get an im mirr im m immersive program. Those teachers get 30 those 30 teachers out of about 300 who apply have curriculum materials, making it easy, taking our millions of dollars that have been invested in Digital Products for our exhibits and film and video and animated maps and oral histories are packaged together with the curriculum materials. They go back and the obligation for their free ride is they have to train at least 30 teachers on the use of these materials in their regions and theyre doing even better than that. 30 times 30 every summer and you get the picture. The following summer we take them either to normandy, on the ground, boots on the ground and going through the battle sites, or we take them to pearl harbor for a week there. We do the same thing for High School Students, a program for about 30 students, leadership, looking at the values and understanding the history of world war ii. They approach the study of world war ii through literature and they have programs around the country. Were one of the few museums that has one of the guilder institutes there. We have two of our own institutes, pacific and european. The guilder is the third for teachers and then our Leadership Program for students. We expect to reach over 1 million teachers in the next four or five years. Yes . [inaudible] were the National History data representatives for the state of louisiana so weve been involved with them for 10, 12 years and helped them to design their Normandy Institute which takes some of the about 3,000 students who compete in college park every summer, about 30 of them get to go to normandy. Weve been working with National History day as a Great Network of about 800 schools around the country and its a valuable network. Some of yall may be, windowi w with them. We work with them in philadelphia and ive been a judge at National History day as well. Its absolute fantastic. Actually, a funny story. I was in lithuania earlier this year and some of the u. S. Embassy had seen that i was a judge on National History and said, oh, i did National History when i was younger, i loved that program. So its a connection for people around the world. Its a Great Network and it activates students all over the country in the study of history using original resources and original sources to begin their work. I think were some more questions . I think we have a little bit more time, another five minutes or so. Can i make one sure. One audience that i think that we have all overlooked is the Business Community. We dont hear a lot about historians reaching Business Leaders or doing things for the Business Community but certainly thats a very Influential Community in the u. S. That has a big influence on policy and on our society in general. So one thing that were piloting at the Lepage Center actually, next week is a Business History briefing series. Well be doing history briefings for Business Leaders in center city, philadelphia. Well be piloting this programs in hopes that we can make it a quarterly or a biannual program. Were actually sort of a little bit following the model that dane had set out with the congressional briefings in focusing on sort of an issue that is sort of resonant to that community. Were focusing on brexit and meeting with the Irish Chamber in philadelphia. We all have so much on our plates and theres a lot of people we want to reach but i do think the Business Community has been overlooked by historians. Were going to make an attempt to foray into that and i hope that this Time Next Year we can report back on how that went. The Lepage Center of which im the first director, it was created and founded by a businessman, albert lepage, who was an alum nous of villanova. He was in the baking business for 30, 40 years, eventually sold his business to a larger conglomerate which is where he got his money and started his philanthropy. It was actually in talking with albert that we got this idea and i think there will be a tremendous appetite for it so im excited for it. A similar story helps explain the rise of the lusken center i suspect theres a businessman behind all of our centers. History major but who credits history and Historical Perspective with saving his Business Career and actually getting him out of a very tricky situation in the middle east and back home to other pursuits. Weve discovered that a good number of them have made their way into the banking world. We have a network of banker phds who report back to us that the Common Thread is the problemsolving quality of history, the act of contextu contextualizing and pulling the pieces apart and seeing how you can repair it. There again, the business connection reveals the absolute utility of history. I would say that all of us in our efforts to survive need to raise funds and find them in our donors. We have a 60member board, Business Leaders from all across the country, ceos of major kormg corporations. You would be amazed at how interested they are in history and how they debate in our board meetings. Were starting a corporate Leadership Academy to develop Leadership Principles of generals and government leaders of world war ii and two bring these programs for a fee to corporations, decision mmaking crises management, how do you handle a crises when youre getting thrown off the beaches on dday and youre moments away from a disaster. So theres other ways that History Museums can get into that Business Community with good history and theyre very interested in that approach as well. All of us have centers or universities that come from the Business Community and are interested in what we do. We should mind them and to engage them in our endeavors, as long as they dont tell us how to do the research and respect the research that we do which i think has been said several times here is at the core of everything. As we draw this to a close, i think were just about out of time, we have, by my clock, about two more minutes, but let me just say that rod, do you want to one more thing. In the spirit of reaching out and reaching through that noise, the Marshall Foundation and the society for military history has for 20odd years sponsored the marshall lecture at aha. I would draw your attention to the fact that this years electr lecturerings fr is from cornell. It honors marshalls fascination and love of history. Marshall himself talked about the need to study history and military history, in part to avoid future wars but also if youre going to get involved in a war, youve got a good sense of how to win that war once you are engaged in it. This lecture honors general marshall, so please if you can, come along and attend. Also, i know historians love the reception post the lecture. Okay, thank you for a wonderful plug at the end of the program. I think what you can tell from this very Engaging Panel and the questions from the audience that theres a great deal of unanimity among us despite the fact that we are coming from different institutions, Different Centers with different missions. Theres a desire and i think expressed today for us to find other ways to collaborate, to cooperate, to partner, to create more space for great history and to break through that noise of the online chatter and the 24hour news cycle. I think with the work that people who are sitting at this table and on this panel and other great History Museums around the country and centers who are not here, that we have a great resource to move onto that Inflection Point that you were talking about, david. Historians maybe need to get into the marketplace and i think you can tell from this panel, this invigorating discussion, that historians are out there. Were using new tools and technologies to get to new publics and new audiences and were finding multiple ways to break into the Public Policy arena with great history. So thank you all for your participation. Thanks to all of our panel for your time and effort, and thank you, dane kennedy for organizing the panel. Its been, i think, an interesting experience for all of us and i hope all of you as well as those also in our Television Audience. Thank you and do we say good night . Thank you all very much. [ applause ] American History tv on cspan 3, this week in primetime. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, the American Historical Associations annual conference in washington d. C. Featuring a panel on Public Policy centers. Tuesday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, more from the American Historical Association conference with a discussion on president ial plantations and how slavery is explored at those sites. Wednesday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, historians attending the American Historical Association conference, look at how American Veterans are being remembered, honored and memorialized since world war ii. Thursday night at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, were live from the museum in washington d. C. With a discussion on the 1968 vaietnam war. Friday night, 8 00 p. M. Eastern, abraham lincolns friends and enemies. Watch American History tv this week in primetime on cspan 3. With landmark cases returning next month for season two, cspans senior history producer shared some background on the upcoming series. By popular demand its returning. Its a coproduction with us and the National Constitution center. As i listened to the callers this morning, theyre talking about race, theyre talking about the powers of congress, the constitution, and immigration. So what weve got in season two are 12 Landmark Supreme Court cases that really take you through the history of the country and deal with all these cases that really, really have something to do with today, along with the National Constitution center, we had a very long set of cases. What we wanted to do was really take cases that had a Human Interest story to them because in the end these cases affect human beings across the country, so the cases came down to did they have an impact in their time, did they change the court, did they change the country in their time, and how relevant are they today. All of them are relevant today. The first case, mccullough versus maryland, is the power of congress to write laws that can overrule the states. In 1886, Anthony Kennedy was an the Supreme Court and thats all about immigration. Well have two very good guests on set here in washington and weve got a video journalist producer who will go around the country to the places that help tell the story for each one of those cases. For wo well go to san francisco. Its about chinese laundromats in san francisco. For the civil rights cases, that was a case that was overturned in 1875, law ma. Frederick doug lalas makes an amazing speech. We want your phone calls, tweets, interact with the audience to really talk about how these shows are relevant today. Be sure to watch season two of landmark cases beginning february 26 at 9 00 p. M. Eastern live on cspan, cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. To help you better understand each case, we have a companion guide, landmark cases volume 2. Its 8. 95 plus shipping and handling. Go to cspan. Org, landmark cases. Next