This program is part of your history behind the headlines series, which features historians providing Historical Context for current events, suggesting how historical thinking can provide angles on the world around history, behind the headlines generally sponsored generously sponsored by a member jarrid brew baker, whom i to whom i am very grateful for his help. This todays discussion which will run until 4 30 p. M. Eastern time. Brings together four leading scholars to place the current controversies and questions around records in Historical Context and obviously we have timed this very. However, i have to say i cannot say that we had any kind of internal info. Notice about is currently going on we just guessed right. Our discussion will be moderated by friend and colleague. Associate dean for justice Equity Diversity inclusion, professor of Public Affairs barbara jordan, chair, ethics and political values, founding director of the center for the study of race and democracy at the university of texas at austin. And of course, most important president of the Pacific Coast branch of the american historical association, my friend and colleague jacqueline price, also executive director of the Society American archivists will offer remarks at the conclusion of todays event. Im going to turn this over to peniel and turn off my camera and spend the rest of the next hour just listening. Thank you for attending. Okay. Thank you, jim its my esteemed pleasure to these three colleagues. Nicole hemmer are tim naftali and trudy, whos camp petersen, who are going to be our our panelists today. Nicole hemmer is the director of the Rogers Center for the american presidency and associate professor of history at vanderbilt university, a scholar of conservativism, media and the president s. She is the author of partizans the conservative revolutionaries who remade american politics in the 1990 and messenger the right conservative media transformation of american politics. She is cohost of the podcast past and present and this day an esoteric political history and cofounder of made by at the washington post, tim naftali, a clinical associate professor of history and Public Service as as the director of the undergraduate Public Program at New York University and founding director of the Richard Nixon president ial library museum. And you may recognize from cnn as a president ial historian and scholar. Trudy, who Scott Peterson is an archival consultant and certified archivist. She spent 24 years with the u. S. National archive, including more than two years as acting archivist the United States. She was also the founding executive director, the open Society Archives in budapest, hungary, and the director of archives and Record Management for the United Nations commissioner for refugees. She is a past president of. The International Conference of the roundtable on archives and the society of american archivists and chaired the International Council on archives, Human Rights Working Group and working group on a standard for access archives. Among her publications. Since are final acts a guide to preserving the records of, truth commissions and temporary courts permanent records. All right. And i would be remiss without noting that today april 4th, 2023, is the 55th anniversary of dr. Luther king jrs assassination in memphis, tennessee. So theres a this is a hugely day, certainly as we are convening this conversation. And former President Donald Trump is facing indictment. New york city. But were here really to talk about the president ial act and really the fact that these records of late have been in the media with President Biden, former President Trump, former Vice President mike pence. Doc that are classified that should have been turned over to the National Archives suddenly have been found in their possession or in their summer homes. And thats really caused a lot of controversy. So i want to start with nicole. Nikki, what is the president ial records act . I think this is sort of a bit of that. Most of the american doesnt even know theres such a thing. So what is it and why is it important . So the president ial records act is one of those pieces of legislation that came in the aftermath in the 1970s of watergate and the Church Committee hearings, which exposed all of this wrongdoing by the cia in the intelligence communities and the in the wake of all this revelation of, wrongdoing by public officials, there was an effort to preserve records that in the case of the nixon, they had tried to destroy, to throw some sunlight on what was happening within the federal government and to make it possible under things like foia for americans to access some of the documents that had been created by the federal government. And so the president ial act, as part of that big push to, open up the government a lot of ways, i think people might be surprised to learn. First of all that there there wasnt an official preservation records law until. The 1950s that the idea of preserve being all of the records of the federal government, of different agencies and cabinets was relatively late the game and when it came to president ial papers president ial papers were considered the private property of the president. So it wasnt considered to be part of the Public Record at until the passage of the president ial records act. And thats a pretty important shift because it recognizes the work done by the president isnt private property. It is in kind of an internal discussion that the president has with himself, but that those are Public Records. Those are things that the American People to see, not just because they might evidence of crimes and wrongdoing, although thats going to up a lot today, but because it is part of our nations history. Right. Its part of how decisions get made. Its part of the record of, how politics runs. And in a democracy that should be part of the Public Record. So you get the president ial records. Back in 1978 and goes into effect in 1981 and pretty much immediately president s are trying to figure out ways to limit because they understand that if their papers become public, in some ways they lose control their legacy and. The president s from reagan on were very concerned about their legacy. You even get after the the beginning, after the september 11 attacks, George W Bush more restraints on the president ial act. Essentially, he he puts forward an executive order that essentially, you know what . These are off limits in perpetuity unless the president says, okay, you can look at them. And so has been this real push and pull not only with accessing president ial, but in some cases with making sure they never enter the to begin with. I mean, this is something we saw with other administrations as well, especially with the rise in telephone calls and finding ways around creating written record. But at the beginning of the trump, people might remember that they were using a system called confi where they could send messages to one another that would automatically so that there would no record created in the first place. Or that story. Politico from early in the trump that talked about how after donald trump would rip up all of the records and then there were two people who were hired to take back together to people were were ultimately fired. And so even though we have this president ial records act actually creating those records getting those records and then also getting those records, the wall of classification is is a challenge for making sure that as many of these records are publicly available as possible. Right. Thank you, tim. Why should this . You know, nicole just gave us a great Historical Context for all of this. Why should it matter to the public . You know, we keep hearing perspectives. Mike pence on joe biden on trump. What is the public in in both the president ial records act . But the fact that were finding these classified documents sort strewn all over the place. One of the things happening lot one of the constants our political culture is americans tend to be about excessive power. And americans are americans tend to like the division of power and and the president ial records act is actually a check on president ial power as nikki has explained, president s that and they are looking for ways to to to to lessen the power but it exists. And why is it a check on president ial power again riffing off of nikki, the president s are interested in legacy. Thats something i learned. I knew it in advance. When you become the head of a president ial library, you very you very quickly encounter people who are consumed by. The question of the legacy of the president whose name is over the the front. So why do these why does the records act matter . Well, because accountability depends on evidence and the documents, the materials, because were in a digital age now. So were not just talking about documents that thats of good things and bad things. And one of the checks on a president is the knowledge if they do something wrong, somebody will find. Now, they may not find out while the president is in office because president s can control access to that material while theyre in office. But once they leave office, eventually and we can talk about the deficiencies in, our declassification system, but events really that material is going to see the light of day and and that will matter even if the president someday herself is no alive, their family will be and their family is deeply invested in that legacy. So that records act is a source of accountability and even though as as peniel said its a very esoteric law. It has profound consequence is particularly in an era of an imperial where the president s has as the most powerful in the world, arguably the has the ability to change lives and can im sure become besotted with this power and the knowledge that somebody many people will figure out how they misuse that power. Lets leave aside the question of crimes. Abuse of power is just as bad. I think that is a check. And so i believe that the health of this act is something americans who care about power and i believe every american does should care about. So though its esoteric, i am delighted by the fact that mistakes by Vice President pence and former Vice President current President Biden and whatever it is donald trump did, we may see an indictment soon. And whatever his crimes are will be alleged that that is shone the bright light of scrutiny on on a on a on president ial power. Most americans unfortunately to this moment dont really think about. So that thats how i see the connection between accountability and the president ial records act. Great. Thank tim. Truly in certain ways the buck stops with in terms of the arc of as the former archivist of the United States, whats the role of the archives here in these president ial records . Preserving them for future historians and journalists to get like tim was talking about a perspective on the good and the bad or even ambivalent that has occurred in an administration. So whats role of archivists here . We think when we think about archive archives, we dont usually think about. These are the president ial records. We usually about archives, sort of public archives and open archives or peoples individual archives, people like the rockefellers or but but the archivists of the United States and the National Archives are where these things are housed, least since after 1981. So in addition to president ial libraries, whats the role of archivist in the context of the president ial records act . Well, let me answer that by adding a little bit to nickys good discussion of, how the act came to be, because you you start to understand the archives role when you understand where the archives was at that and starting in 1915, the National Archives was placed under called the General Services administration, which was a conglomerate which did everything from motor pools to buying a paper cups for the government. It was an unhappy marriage, but it was a subordinate part and it became a real problem. When nixon left office, because nixons negotiation over, his papers was with the head of the General Services administration, not with the archivist of the United States. And some pretty ugly decisions made by those two men working together. And thats part of the background to records act as well. So when the congress decided it had to do something it decided to create a president ial commission or not an actual commission called public documents commission shorthand, which was to look what had happened to the records of all three branches of government at the top. What happened to the records of the justices of the Supreme Court . What happened to the records members of congress . What happened to the records of the president and . A wonderful historian was, the key staff member on that commission. And so its a good report. Congress then chose only to look at the president part. They chose not to look at themselves and they chose to look at the justices of, the Supreme Court. But when they started, then to write that legislation, they were looking at an archivist was down in the bureaucracy, couple of steps from the president , but was also an appointee of the president. And so the first step is, you can Congress Really do this guy really legislate in this realm . And if they did this, then how do you make a distinction between the president and his employee, which is supposed to have this power . And so some of the really odd parts of the act are trying to buffer that relation issue and make sure the archivist has enough authority to actually with this. And you see in the specific role where the president the acting president says, i think we should destroy some of this stuff. And the archivist required to give an opinion but cant overrule the president. The only ones who can overrule the president is, the congress, and the only thing the archivist can do is say hello. We think this is a bad idea. So its a very act because the way its embedded within the government because of that, then the administer version of the act is not straightforward forward at all. You are dealing with past president and have to negotiate the between the current president , the past president who are often of different parties and you have to if the past president says i dont want this release you have to ask the current president , will you enforce. We get into president ial authorities all over again and then negotiate how. That is going to be worked. But its i want to say one other thing. Its important know this is not about class ified records. The press has picked up on that and has overdone it. The majority of president ial records are not classified. We deal with things like our legislation and how are we going to craft this legislation or how are we going to respond to legislative initiative. We get what are we thinking about health. Weve seen it of course, in clinton on the his big effort to do health legislation. And weve seen it, of course, in the covid crisis and all of that of record keeping, which is so important for understanding history of how we got to where we are is not classified. And to look at this as an issue of classified records only is simply a mistake. All right. Thats a great segway into my to tim. You know, right. In the context of the Trump Indictment or plans to indict what about the residents of this and the president ial record jack now the partizan divides over you know if if if a democratic president has some papers that are askew republicans are accusing that person of corruption and really vice versa. The republican president has papers that are askew. Democrats and others are accusing that person of corruption, especially within the context of your earlier comments about, how americans are really careful and are worried. Anybody having too much power and really like divided government. What are we to make. Were were in 2320 23 in a context where it there is so much hype or partizanship and and and really every thing even even something that is sort of coming out of the Good Government post watergate movement of the 1970s and like trudys reminding us congress didnt really spread the wealth in terms of in of putting checks on its own records and putting checks on a Supreme Court record attorney thank you for that history because i think that thats what they should have done right. I think i think that that all branches of like tim is explaining to us that divided government, they all have a check on their power. Well we can check the congressional records. Id love to see what Mitch Mcconnell was up to doing and not just Mitch Mcconnell on tip, too. Im im a bipartisan an historian. Id like to see what they were all up to. Right. And so, jim, what are we to make of this during this this very Pivotal Moment in american, where, again, weve january 6th, weve got trump and the indictment, the big lie, so much is going on. What we to make. What are we to make of thi