Transcripts For CSPAN3 Federal Government Historians 2017031

Everyone agreed many historians would say Historical Perspectives are important and policymaking. But there is much less understanding about how to actually link perspectives to policymaking and when, where, and what context it is appropriate. The National History center thought that in a series of panels about history and policy , federal government historians, who are often those closest to policymaking, might have some valuable thoughts to offer. We all appreciate that insight. My name is claire altman, i am the directory of the federal Judicial Center in washington, dc. It is the research and Education Agency and the History Office is responsible for increasing knowledge about the history of the federal courts, promoting programs on the history of the federal courts, and we work to preserve the history of the judiciary. I am honored to be joined by 4 other federal government historians. I will introduce them now and will assume since their biographies are relevant that they will fill in if i have missed any key points. Each will speak 57 minutes and and then we will have a moderated discussion. I will start to my immediate right. Stephen randolph is a historian at the state Department Responsible for the Foreign Relations of the United States, the official documentary record of american Foreign Relations and i will add, it is undoubtedly a source that is indispensable for historians who work in that area. He graduated from the air force academy in 1974 in served for 24 years, retiring as a colonel in 2001. He then served for 10 years on the faculty of the National Defense university before moving to the state department in 2011. He earned a masters degree in history of science from johns doctoratend then a in history in 2005. He is the author of powerful and brutal weapons, published by Harvard University press. Bramwell,m is lincoln who specializes in public history. Following his positions at university of Nevadalas Vegas where he served as a research director, in 2009 he became chief historian of the Usda Forest Service based in washington, d. C. His duties are wideraging and include directing all aspects of History Program, archival storage, external outreach, producing and managing oral histories, as well as expert testimony in federal court in developing a Strategic Vision for history within the Land Management agencys mission. Most recently he served as a legislative Affairs Specialist acting as a direct liaison between the Chiefs Office and congress and assisting development of agency policy, providing critical political advice to leadership and writing congressional testimony and devising an agencywide position on pending legislation. He has a lot to add to this conversation. Maintains thek history of Medicine Division at the library of medicine and has a highly collaborative portfolio for the nih and National Library of medicine. As a social and cultural historian of medicine and war, he is the editor of two books published by the Manchester University press. Prior to joining the National Library of medicine, dr. Reznick held other positions including director of institute or study of occupation and health of the American Occupation foundation and senior curator for the Armed Forces Institute of pathology. He earned his masters degree and phd from emory university. All the way on the end is eric boyle. Lecturer attly a the nurse of maryland in the Public Health science program. Chief archivist for the National Museum of health and medicine at an essence been chief historian for the department of energy. , quackt book medicine, was a list in 2013. Published in 2013. So you see why i am honored and to be among such esteemed panelists. For our conversation today, the five of us talked about a few broad themes. I will introduce those to frame the conversation. We would like to talk about the relationship between government historians and policymaking in practice, the intentional contributions to policymaking, and the relationship between history as practiced within Government Agencies and the daytoday work of governance. Im going to ask each of the panelists to talk for five to seven minutes about what they do. Time permanent, i will tell you what we do at the federal Judicial Center commend and then moderate a discussion about some of these issues. Join me in welcoming our panelists and we will kick it off with professor randolph. Dr. Randolph let me start by thanking you for putting together this panel. It is unique. Every time i find myself at a session like this, i am surrounded by other historians from cia, department of defense, and find it very diverse and different from my normal setting. Really a huge opportunity and much appreciated. The remarks i made today are my own opinion, not cleared by the state department. Within the ecosystem of public history, i think youll find very different examples here today. Mine is at the state department, we have a Statutory Program which is based in law which gives us a great deal of mass. We have about 50 historians on staff and are organized to execute primary missions which first of all is considered the publication and formulation of the United States series. The official documentary record. Which occupies about 75 80 of our total work capacity. Beyond that, we offer policy support and education and outreach. The Foreign Relations series, we consider a distinct program but in itself it is extremely powerful support for policymakers when they have the awareness to use it. I use this moment in time among the volumes we publish on every administration, every subseries, we offer a management volume that tells how all the different administrations have structured the national decisionmaking process. Second volume on the foundations, philosophical foundations going back to johnson and forward, how they viewed the international environments, their objectives, and how they intended to achieve their objective. All of this is rich material for those executing the ongoing changes. We execute the second primary mission of policy support which brings me here today. The types of support we offer are worth quickly encapsulating. First, chronology. Getting the facts and story right is the first responsibility of the historian but we cannot leave it behind as we look to the broader task. Second, analysis. We find ourselves doing considerable support for Public Diplomacy by missions overseas and within the department. Another thing we find ourselves doing which is a special honor for the service of historian is to serve as a template for other nations looking to do what we do, which is to bring to the public the documentation of their history. We have hosted people from around the world looking for means to create such a program in their country and looking to us for guidance. How do we approach the program . The problem . We align historians with the regional bureaus. Not in a formal sense, but we have historians to for example, are in the african bureau, the western hemisphere. In part to understand their issues and in part to understand things that are building before they become crisis so we can be a help. One of the perennial problems with providing support is it happens quicker than the research and writing cycle so the earlier you have awareness the better our research. The better off you are. That is what we try to do. If we have an assignment for me higher levels of priority, we will swing people out of one program to offer that support. Basically, the 50 members all offer policy support in one means or another. What we do then, kind of the summary of this, is that there is a constant ongoing injection of historical expertise into the process from the state department from all levels, from the office all the way to the highest level of leadership in the department. Very flexible in format. Anything from onepage papers to multiyear Research Projects for example on the negotiating record of the mideast peace process. We also, because the nsc does not have the around and store in, we are on a close working relationship with them. We work with them daily very closely and when they have a Historical Program they reach out to us. We have provided papers to the white house for the president going overseas and other items as requested. The less part of our program i the last part of our program i will mention before we move on this we have a very active and leadingedge Digital Publishing program which extends our reach not just within the department but around the world. That is something there is a series of articles from the philippines the last couple of days from a historian there who is reflecting on their own history as it is described in those pages. The other thing we do in the digital realm is we have a website that is open to the public with 11 data sets. Tryingfor policymakers to get history of the department. We have a sharepoint site within the department firewall you might say that makes readily available to our policymakers he basics of the history and background of policy to nations around the world. I will let that outline stand for now and turn it over to lincoln. Dr. Bramwell thank you very much. And thank you for organizing this panel and for the invitation and for everyone attending here and for coming to learn a little bit and discuss how history can have a place and value within the federal government and with its management. Again, my name is lincoln bramwell, and like my other colleagues, i will just put out that blanket disclaimer these are all my own opinions and descriptions of my program and what i do. I will probably make it sound a little better than what somebody else might say officially but i guess that comes with the disclaimer. My position at the Forest Service is different. It is not a statutory position. There is not a great mass of historians. I am the chief historian but that also means i am the historian. I worked out of the National Headquarters for about seven or eight years and a lot of what i do, because it is not a statutory position, is i do a lot of trying to prove my valueadded. Managementspeak, showing how history can be of value. The one sentence description that i use for the History Program at the Forest Services that our job is to make history more accessible to the public and more meaningful to the agency. I kind of split my time between two different audiences. External and internal. Externally, in dealing with the public, i do a lot of what historians are trained to do. I write books. I publish articles. I do the Standard Research and writing that we are typically accustomed to. Tracking down, like i am sure all of my colleagues do, we will be asked for the facts related to a certain question and go tracking down. It is kind of sort of the bread and butter of what historians are known for and what they can do. We also do a lot of outreach externally and often times we will get outreaches from the media, whether it is printed or radio or tv. They want context. They want perspective. Oftentimes, what they are not asking for but what historians provide as we can tell that story and place those facts within a story that make sense and are meaningful to people. So that is a little bit about the external or publicfacing side. Internally it has been a little more fun and a little more leftbrained thinking then academicallytrained historians that saw themselves teaching at a university the rest of their career. What i do, what i have worked a lot at, is changing their perception. This historian position and the History Program, going from the perception of being a historian that is a repository of lists, facts, dates, and being a historian of the agency, and changing into having them think of me as a historian for the agency. To help them sort of realize that trained historians have a skill set that can be applied in a lot of different ways to help the agency mission. This is kind of you know, i had written an article in the haa magazine thinking about historians as swiss army knives. We should be a multitoll you can break out and apply to a lot of different things. That has got me into a lot of really fun activities within the agency. I will do a lot of new employee orientations and help them put the work they do into context and also my agency is really big on training and training leaders and leading people into kind of more robust responsibilities at the national level, it is fun to take people that are really focused on sort of narrow, small problems or regional problems and kind of open up more natural research. We are Natural Resource managers and you probably have a degree in some sort of Natural Resource field and hand want to make your decision strictly ecologically and scientifically but we also operate within a political and cultural system. You know, we serve the American People and basically the laws that apply to the agency i work for are a reflection of the desires of the American People and their representatives in congress, so it is really fun to kind of provide this kind of context, both political, cultural, and help the decisionmakers put the decisions that they want to do within the context to help them make hopefully a better decision. And, what i spend a lot of my time doing internally is making myself available to leadership and providing those onepage briefing papers. The longer analyses. Also, jumping in and say like, a legislative affairs at staff and actually working directly with congress because i take it as a victory for public history and historians, they need somebody who can communicate, write, research, can do it on their own, do not have to train. A historian would be perfect. And i thought, yes, we won. With that, i will leave the rest of it to the panelists. Mr. Reznick good morning. I work at the National Library of medicine, which is one of the 27 institutes that makes at the National Institutes of health, one of the worlds Premium Research facilities located in bethesda, maryland. It has its roots in the 19 century. Originally we were the office of the United States Army Surgeon General and later the army medical library. Counterpart to the army medical museum. These early institutions were located in various places around washington, d. C. , and the modern library, where i work today, opened on the campus of the nih in 1962. The nlm has grown over the past 100 80 years to be the largest biomedical library, home to a constantly growing collection of nearly 30 million items in a variety of formats. Traditional analog formats and a variety of digital resources that deliver these collections and data every day to millions of people not only around the nation but around the world. Historians, scientists, the general public. Within the librarys history of medicine which i direct, it houses one of the Worlds Largest History Collections related to human health and disease. These collections than span centuries from the 11th to the 21st including a wide range of formats. Books, images, fine arts, ephemera, and digital material. The specific mission of the Medicine Division is to collect preserve, make available, and interpret this collection for the general public and our mission relates to general policymaking in ways distinctive to our institution. Internally, in other words, the history of Medicine Division operates fundamentally as part of, not apart from, our home branch of the library as a whole. We are a special collection to which special collections around the world look for guidance but more importantly, we are a unit of several dozen professionals from a variety of fields who Work Together with our colleagues to support the overarching mission of our institution to divide biomedical information to the public, old and new. So as part of our institution, my division participates directly in discussing, formulating, contributing to, and implementing a variety of policies and procedures related to multiple tasks that support our mission to the public. For example, our catalogs of workand unique materials collaboratively to meet and informed comment catalog standards to make our collections available to the public. More specifically, we have one bookr book rare cataloger that regularly offers historical insights of our controlled vocabulary thesaurus which is used by our institution for cataloging bibliographic descriptions and cataloging articles for pub med. In the same vein, as part of our institution, my division is supported by our new leadership to have a voice in the future of our institution as we embark on our new Strategic Planning process and engage in the cha