in 1979, c-span was created as a service by america's television brought tond is today by your cable or satellite provider. american history tv, we hear from historians who work with any federal government about how affectnstitutions policymaking. they discuss preservation initiatives and how they help other historians assets documents. -- access documents. it is about 90 minutes. >> i want to welcome you all and thank you for coming. entitleddtable is "federal historical historic and government documents." i became involved about a year and a half ago. everyone agreed many historians

would say historical perspectives are important and policymaking. but there is much less understanding about how to perspectives to policymaking a when, where, and what context it is appropriate. history of panels about and policy with federal historians who are often those closest to policymaking and might have some valuable thoughts to offer. inside.ppreciate that my name is claire altman, i am the directory of the federal judicial center in washington, d c. it is the research and education agency and the history office is responsible to promote programs the historypreserve

of the judiciary. i am honored to be joined by four other historians. andll introduce them now will assume since there biographies are relevant that they will fill in if i have missed any key points. speak 5-7 minutes and then you will have a moderated discussion. i will start to my immediate right. 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 that isdly a source 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 kernel in 2001. he moved to the state department in 2011 in our day masters degree in science from john's hopkins in 1975 and a dark or in in history in 2005. he is the author of "powerful and brutal weapons," published by harvard university press. next to him is lincoln around while who specializes in public history. following his positions at university of nevada las 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 white-raging and include directing all aspects of -- history program duties are white-ranging and

include her acting all aspects of the history, and expert testimony in federal court in developing a strategic vision for history within the land management agencies mission. most recently he served as a legislative affairs specialist acting as a direct liaison between congress and the agency policy, providing critical political advice to leadership developing an agencywide position. he has a lot to add to this cover system. secretary resnick maintains the history of medicine division at the library of medicine and has a highly collaborative portfolio librarynih and national of medicine. as a social and cultural historian he is the editor of two books published by the

manchester university press. nationaljoining the library of medicine, dr. resnick held other positions including director of institute or study health of theand american occupation foundation and senior curator for the armed forces institute of pathology. he earned his degrees from every university. university -- and worry emory unive next, chief archivistrstity. from 2012-2016 and chief historian for the department of energy where he is also the primary archivist and federal preservation officer. his first book was published in

2013 and his current work includes a book project tentatively titled "in the belly of the beast: history of alternative medicine at the nih." so, you see why am honored and delighted to be among such as deemed 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 fact is, the intentional contributions to policymaking, and the relationship between history as practiced within government agencies and the day-to-day workouts governance. i am going to take this back to the panelist to talk for 5-7 minutes about what they do.

i will go last and watched him closely but time-permitting will tie what we do at the judicial center and moderate a discussion. join me in welcoming our panelists and we will kick it off with professor randolph. thanking yourt by 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, diverse and different from my normal setting. this is a huge opportunity and much appreciated. the remarks i made today are my own opinion, not cleared by the state department. publicthe ecosystem of history, i think you'll find very different examples here today. department,he state 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 55-65% of our total work capacity. beyond that, we offer policy education and outreach. the formulation series, we considered 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 decision-making

process. second, foundations, philosophical foundations going back to johnson and toward, how they viewed the international environments, their objectives, and how they intended to achieve their objective. this is all good material for those executing the ongoing changes. the second, primary mission is 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, and analysis. we find ourselves doing considerable support for public diplomacy for 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 documented people from around the world -- 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? we align historians with the regional euros. not in a formal sense, but we example,orians to for 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 surprising -- providing quickeris it happens than the research and writing cycle so the earlier you have awareness the better our research. so if we have an assignment for me higher levels of priority, we

will swing people out of one program to offers support to another. so basically d50 50 members all offer policy support in one means or another. thatwe do, the summary, is there is a constant ongoing injection of historical expertise into the process from the state department from the office all the way to the highest level of leadership in the department. in format.le papers torom one page multi-your research projects for example on the negotiating record of the many peace process is. 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. theave provided papers to

white house for the president going overseas and other items as requested. the less part of our program i will mention before we move on this we have a very active and leading-edge digital publishing program which extends our reach not just within the department but around the world. aat is something, there is 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 the love and data sets. 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. with that outlined, i will turn

it over to lincoln. >> 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. ofre is not a great mass

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 not acause it is statutory position, is i do a lot of trying to prove my value-added. management-speak, 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 a writing that we are typically accustomed to. i am sureown, like all of my colleagues do, we will be asked for the facts related to a certain question and go trackback 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 the get outreaches from media, whether it is printed or radio or tv. they want context. perspective. often times, 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 public-facing side. internally it has been a little

more fun and a little more left-brained thinking then academically-trained historians that saw themselves teaching at a university the rest of their career. have worked at i lot at, is changing their perception. this historian position and the history program, going from the perception of being a historian ,hat is a repository of lists facts, dates, and being a historian of the agency and changing into of them think of me as a historian for the agency. to help them sort of realize have aained historians 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 up an article in the haa magazine thinking about historian says swiss army

knives. we should be a multi-toll you can break out and applied 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 --e robust responsibilities the national level, it is fun to take people that are really of narrow, small problems or regional problems and kind of open up more natural research. you probably have a degree in some sort of natural resource filled a hand want to make your decision strictly ecologically we alsontifically but operate within a political hot young system. you know, we serve the american

people and basically the laws agency i workthe for are a reflection of the desires of the american people and their representatives in congress, so it is really on to kind of provide this kind of context both political, cultural, and help the decision-makers put the decisions that they want to do within the context to help them make hopefully a better decision. of myhat i spend a lot time doing internally is making myself available to leadership and providing those one-page 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 need somebodyey

who can communicate, right, 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 balance. >> 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 world's premium research facilities located in but these deck, maryland. it has its roots in the 19 century. originally the office of the united states army surgeon general and later the army medical library. early institutions were located in various places around washington, d.c. and the modern opened on the campus of the nih in 1962. it has grown over the past 100 80 years to be the largest bio-medical library, home to

nearly 30 million items and 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 butter of the world. historians, scientists, historians, the general public. within the library's history of medicine which i direct, it houses one of the world's largest history collections related to human health and disease. it spans centuries from the 11th to the 21st including a wide range of formats. books, images, fine arts, fmr, and for digital material. collecting, preserving, interpreting this collection for the general public and our mission relates to general policymaking and waste distinctive to our institution. internally, anna edwards, 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 friday failed to work together with our colleagues to support the overarching mission of our institution to divide biomedical information to the public, old and new. part of our institution, my division participates directly in discussing, formulated, contribute 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 unique and read materials are worked on collaboratively to meet and informed comment catalog standards to make our collections available to the public. more specifically, we have one 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. it 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 challenges on promises in the area of big data and data science. our new director, dr. patricia brennan, invited me recently to write for her blog and talk about how my colleagues and i are participating and envisioning the library's third century of public service. the piece i wrote was entitled "embracing the future as stewards of the past." it was based on another talk i gave last fall at the university of san francisco. i meanacing the future several things. embracing the government, and

enabling access to all, not just a few. this engagement should be across the disciplines and across the spectrum of the public to enjoy that scholars, educators, policymakers, and interested people of today and tomorrow have access to the world historical medical heritage for research, teaching, and learning, certainly policymaking. meansing the future appreciating at understanding the digital medical collections exist in the format appealing not only to those focus on deep reading and study of individual works, historians, but also scholars and entirely new in mininginterested the surrogates and their associated metadata for more focused research. the revolving digital world is data.sing its in the world of big data and data science, meeting the long-standing world of persistent physical objects that contain records of the human condition and as these worlds

collide at young coexist, opportunities are bound to advance and expand cooperation between institutions and organization to support and preserve history and support research. all of this will contribute to establishing the historical record of tomorrow. i've argued further that the existence and persistence of this fast and expanding virtual world should prompt more historians to learn more about the amenities and partner more with specialist to know that pulls well and how they can and will capture and make sense of the increasing digital world of the human condition. the digital record will coexist. better to try to understand and invest in these tools today when the record will be far bigger. the historical reading of these texts will be more challenging. only by doing this will we not look back and realize we have not missed an opportunity to do things better.

history of not medical history and knowing that we strove to surpass our example for future generations. thanis more advocacy policymaking but these arguments and how and where i make them represent some of the distinctive ways i serve my agency as a historically minded leader. the other examples i described, the ones that are more internal but have an external impact, the cataloging work i described are no less historically informed. so when my colleagues and i do national library of medicine do not undertake policymaking in traditional ways, some of these nontraditional approaches convey that history is alive and well history of the national institutes of health. thank you for putting this panel together.

>> first, i would like to record the sentiment already expressed by some of my colleagues today in the appreciation for you all coming here today in giving us an opportunity to talk about what we do and think more critically than maybe what we do on a day-to-day basis between our work and policymaking, specifically in governance more broadly. i would also like to issue the same disclaimer that these are my views and not the views of the department of energy and the additional disclaimer that i have only been a federal historian for less than one year but i have also been an active member for the society for history and the federal government and have engaged with a wide range of federal historians within your organization for a number of years. the chair of our panelists mentioned before generously provided us with three themes to help focus our discussion today so in my brief introductory remarks i would like to focus mainly on those three themes.

first on the relationship of government historians to policymaking in practice. what is the particularly challenging things about engaging policymakers is that opportunities for doing so very schematically from agency to agency. so in one agency, policymaking may be your second priority and you do it on a regular basis to speak to policymakers are provide information directly to them as a way of informing decision making. in other cases, and this is i think predominately the case of the department of energy throughout its history, engaging with policymakers has not always been explicitly part of the duties of a doe historian. with that said, since the pioneering work in the 1950's by richard hewitt to many consider

to be the dean of federal beenrians, historians have compiling material at least in part for policymakers. in the 1950's and 1960's is included a series of books on the history of the atomic energy commission, one of which was nominated for the pulitzer prize in the 1970's. this included a series of booklets called "energy history studies" which explained the history, goals, and achievements of and assess our and major programs within the department of energy beginning in the 1990's, there were a series of background papers made available to policymakers called "history provided toch were incoming deal we in particular especially during presidential transitions. more recently, the office of history and heritage resources has provided policymakers with

direct access to reports, briefs, and other documents related to past policy making through our chronology of events which is available on our majore and highlights developments in doe history going back to the energy commission. the doe has also worked with another agency within the doe in developing a website that features previously classified documents which are then made available directly to the public and policymakers as well. in most cases, the office of history plays a direct where -- role when it is called upon to do so. it is not something i do on a day-to-day basis necessarily, interactingntage of

with policymakers in that way is that in these cases, the perceived value of historical perspective has already been established. somebody has decided, maybe we should know more about the history of this subject. we should have a little more context in the decision-making process. on the second theme, the potential decision-making perspective, i suspect there is a wide range of contributions that varies dramatically from agency-two-agency. in the case of the doe, i will mention a few examples of different types of past contributions. first, doe historians have contributed to litigation work from inside and outside the agency by providing documents, research. this has influenced subsequent ,egal and policy precedents

particularly in the area things like radiation exposure or waste cleanup, things like that. second, the opposite of history has also responded to thousands years. requests over the many of which have dealt with issues engaged by policy makers outside the agency. so someone once to know what happened in the development of a specific doe policy from the 1960's or 1970's, the historians offices the place they go. thely, it in carrying out office's larger mission, which is to preserve and articulate the agencies institutional memory through a wide variety of mediums and programs as the federal preservation officer at the doe, the chief historian has also worked with other government historians.

.ith archivists museum curators. reservationist. contractors. archaeologist. to create a body of work that is designed to be embraced and used anpolicy makers seeking analogous historical issues and challenges they might draw upon. the panel,d game of the relationship of the history is practiced within government day-to-day work of governance, there is substantial evidence that at the doe, the opposite of history has been blessed with mostly positive working relationships with agency colleagues throughout its history. i suspect this is in no small part because my colleagues report may have conscientiously made efforts to engage their agency peers in a variety of ways not limited to policy-making but also including the day-to-day operations of doe

headquarters. its laboratories and sites around the countries. example, hass, for frequently been called upon to inform a wide range of day-to-day governor matters. for example, in rolling out new policies or funding opportunities or in announcing scientific discoveries. our colleagues have regularly called upon the office to .esearch precedents in responding to foia requests, the evans has developed a collaborative relationship with isbers of programs and of us across the department of energy is well in an effort to conscientiously respond to individuals seeking information related to the past work of the department and through our work to preserve agency records, i would also argue that the office of history has played a central role in collaborating with colleagues to ensure that documents that have ongoing relevance or applications are

made available to people who are involved in the day-to-day governance. thenow only but also in future. i am confident the value of work done by the office of history and heritage resources is well-established and while i have no doubt that we have a duty to ensure that the value of that work is continuously communicated to policy-makers involved ins day-to-day governance within the doe as well as other agencies, i am optimistic the importance of this work will be embraced in the future. >> thank you all for those thoughtful introductions. i would like to say a bit about what i do and how my offices

positioned in relation to policy as a way of opening up a broader set of questions about relationship between government, historians, and policy making. i have not been a historian in the federal government for that long. about a year and a half. i am an american legal historian. i have a phd and history and a law degree anton a couple years at amherst college before coming to the federal judiciary center. my current job has me doing a lot of the same kinds of work i was doing before in substance and also in the nature of the , american legal history. on the other hand, the move from academia to being a government historian involves a lot of self-conscious reflection about the role of historians and about what the job is and i think the public service dimension of being a government historian requires you to think much more

on a day-to-day basis about how you are helping me public with your work and what your appropriate role is than i had ever experienced before. so you are catching me at a moment of reflection on this particular issue. that what i want i think to talk about opening up some questions specificbout the relationship or the orientation of different government historians to the realm of policymaking. so when many of us think about government historians, we think about some of the agencies represented here. we tend to think about a lot ofs and different places in the executive branch. i am not in the executive branch i am in the judiciary. which means i have a very different relationship to policymaking. branch that is

self-consciously the nonpolitical branch. my agency is not engage, like my colleagues, in implementing and carrying out policy. that is not what we do. so, there are constitutional and statutory reasons that my job as a historian is quite a bit removed from policy making. separation of powers. the role of law. statutoryecific mission of my agency to be an independent research and education agency for the federal court, not to be engaged in making policy or making influence in policy beyond providing independent and objective research. so, i think that independence has a lot of value. us a lot. allows it provided us a lot of

esteem amongd those who look to us for deep, serious, objective work on the history of the courts. it allows us to stay insulated from certain political pressures which is a nice thing. it allows us to be insulated from pressure which could potentially unduly shape how we interpret the record and that is something all government historians have to balance. areourse i recognize there very important reasons historians should be much more closely connected to policymaking and my colleagues pointed out many of this. nevertheless, the difference between my position hand there is brings up a broader question which is a normative one i think underlies his entire session. said the panel, the way i introduce an end the way we have

been talking about policymaking presumes historical perspective and policymaking is a good thing. that is willy wonka, that is what we want to achieve but i want to start by asking -- that is what we want, that is what we want to achieve but i want to start by asking what is the appropriate role of a historian in relationship to policy. what are the advantages and disadvantages to linking historical work and research within the government to policymaking directly? i will open that up to start the conversation. two whoever wants to answer. or i am happy to keep talking. laughter] >> i will go ahead and start. i have gone through a long career and i have never had anyone questioned the value of historical expertise and

decision-making. it can be misused famously. you have got i think a risk we are careful to pay attention to in the state department. doensure that whatever we provide to the policy maker is unaffected by the desires of the policymaker. that what we do is provide balanced, comprehensive, relevant history to the policymaker as part of their decision-making process. it is not determinative but i think every act, as i mentioned earlier, every active diplomacy, every active foreign policy, every relationship with any issue going on in the world of foreign relations rests on a basis of previous events and decisions and it is our role to do what we can to make sure that is understood. i will tell you that the first roll of my offices to get the history right. get the history right, you know? there are all kinds of

opportunities to shape history or put a slant on it for public affairs or public diplomacy or doething and we just cannot that. our credibility as the basis of our effectiveness and that is something where always watchful about as we engage throughout the department. to weigh in? want rx i think one of the challenging things, i alluded to >> i think one- of the challenging things, i alluded to this earlier, but finding the link between the historian office and policymakers at the agency. i like to think i am providing information they draw upon in making resources available both internally and through our website which is available to everybody, but there is no way for me to track that, really and to know for sure unless somebody reaches out to me from within

the agency to ask a question or to express their gratitude for having provided that. so, i think, you know, one of the other difficult things operating in that environment is with every presidential administration you have a new crop of people coming in and so you do not really know anticipate how to what the new group of people will expect in terms of the larger beach and you might make and so it is, it is a relationship that i think is -- because it is poorly defined -- sometimes it can be more challenging than it would be if there was a clear, something more clearly established. the "poorlyck up on efined and lack of clarity." that is something i was trying

to convey in my prepared remarks because to me, from my vantage point, the practice of history and historical thinking is part nationale do at the library of medicine. we curate and we have exhibits but the process of historical thinking is diffused and articulated by many people in my division who are not historians. they are historically-minded archivists and librarians and historically minded information specialist. and sometimes they do an even better job than i certainly do. i am not formally a historian but 90% of my time is spent as you would expect it to be, running the division. running all of the aspects of it in cooperation with my great stuff so the historical thinking is diffused throughout the division and informs the policies and procedures within

our institution as well as outside that if you get to the lack of clarity, i appreciate what you're saying because it is hard to put one's finger on what the impact is, what are the outcomes? have had an impact when as you say, someone from the outside says, hey, would you help us with this or to a task or research or smart but that does not happen all the time. increasingly now, with shrinking budgets and rising expectations and changing times overall, i think those who are involved with the historical enterprise need to be keenly aware of how to identify those outcomes and because thempact historical enterprise is hugely important for reasons represented by all of us in all of our different capacities and i think the issues of tracking outcomes and impact is more important than ever before

because -- i will say this further -- many of us can , rightly, that historical thinking and the practice of history is essential to policymaking or even in public affairs in some ways, but there are a variety of other disciplines i've worked with every day that also have an equal of not greater influence on those things and i have to work collaboratively with them to affect a positive impact and secondly, we are living in a disciplines lot of are changing rapidly including the discipline of history. through all of the forces around us and so i think all of these in mind bring to bear as i perceive my work and the best way i can frame it is the shift of the traditional analog world that we've known for a long, long time, to the digital one. the pivot is impacting us profoundly and a variety of ways so there are a lot of

certainties that we of all worked with as historians but there are a lot of uncertainties as well. >> do you want to add anything? to jump in.nt >> ok. i was going to pick up on a point. i wanted to connect this points to something lincoln mentioned in his remarks which was a historian within an agency working player doing all sorts of other things, like jeff's point, there are a lot of translation work that goes on every day to get people to understand what a historical perspective really is and what the work of historians is really all about and to understand what you're are doing and sometimes the people who are perhaps conveying your message that are the link in the chain, you have to first get them to understand perspectiveal behind it and what the work of historians can bring a hand that

in itself is i think an important kind of work that we have to do on a day-to-day basis but it connects with this question i raised at the beginning which is, how do we move from the perspective that figuring outy to how to link perspective to policymaking which is a much greater policy challenge that i think everyone has expressed this work of translation. anything you want to add? i'd guess. piggybacking on that in listening to the other comments what i find kind of fine and interesting about working out a federal agency is it is like you are working at a university and there is a big history department, mixing it up with

other disciplines. a lot of what you are doing is learning the language of these other disciplines and how to communicate what you need to communicate to them. you want to provide historic thinking and context in good data in the right answer, but you have to learn how to communicate that to people that ine been trained to think different ways and for me that is actually really fun to work and tothing like that find there is a lot of desire for that historical thinking. i mean, when i shifted from academia, i had been in a big history department and i mean we have all had that experience where, you know, who is going to come talk to? you are just another historian if somebodyway and is interested in that particular topic you're working on they by or something.

at least, that was my experience and moving to a federal agency i found it was very refreshing to have people kind of approach me that they were looking for help with historic thinking. they would not say that in those terms, they would not ask, i need your help to think historically about this stuff by what they had a lot of times in my agency is, they have a lot of data. they have masses of data. they are trying to find someone to help them make sense of that data. historians do that really well. we can find the right data and we can wreckage and in a way that resonates with people in different disciplines, different walks of life and learning how to do that, learning how to and package that correct information in a way that people will hear it and it will have an impact is really

challenging but also really an exciting challenge to see kind of a negative that you have put into something kind of weave its way into like an outcome in a speech, a policy speech, and into a position that is being put forward. you think, all right. you know, that communication resonate. they've got something factual that is right. it is the correct information. it makes my little historian heart warmer. [laughter] that little moment. >> i think a different way some of you have referenced, and eric maybe raised this most directly, treated asoften seem somewhat apart from everything else going on and i think that can bleed over into the influence that historians have on policy in the sense that people making policy may see a

number of kind of contemporary conversations and a number of other forms of research that come to them as the sort of, that is the main work of policymaking. that is the main information we need. that is the data we need. the history is the background, right? so, how do you change that conversation so that the assumption is not history is background to illuminate the social scientific research and to illuminate the kind of political conversation but it can do more than just the something apart in the background. does that make sense? >> i am going to quote eric because he used the phrase "conscientious engagement." i think that is a wonderful way

to frame an answer to your question because the key is conscientious engagement with others in your agency like you are saying. meeting them where they are in itir own discipline and involves an ingredient of public affairs also. in other words, explaining to people, meeting them where they are, it understanding where they are coming from and that the historical view or enterprise does have some value to offer even as yours does as a technical specialist or archivist or librarian or chief --icy makers so it is pop part of that true conscientious engagement that historians can become not background but foreground and become

informative so that is how i look at it to go back to public affairs i don't think that at least the policymaking i described and public affairs are mutually exclusive. hand-in-handgo when public affairs, meeting, when you talked what the history of your office, your unit, talk about it in a meaningful way not as a cabinet of curiosity in the worst sense or in a banal sort of way. but truly fleshing out the richness of the and agencies history. the fact that it was not only leadership that led an agency but hundreds of people every generation to shape a particular branch. by framing history and a really rich thoughtful way in a public affairs context, that also leads

to history becoming more foreground as opposed to background. that is my experience that i potential the pitfalls there. >> when i spoke earlier i did not need to say the importance of history was easy. >> you make it look easy. [laughter] >> i will take that as a complement. in the department, we have a giant bureaucracy. we have over a hundred posts out there. the amount of history to be addressed is immense. moved, i think, all of us into a world where i think, in my case, i work in the bureau of public affairs, everybody but me in the bureau is working on the cycle time of a tweet, right? it changes the nature of your

audience, i think, and therefore how you need to go about, again, i call it targeted engagement which reflects my air force background maybe. [laughter] x conscientious engagement, we will get this right before we are done here. conscientious engagement, we'll get this right before we're done here. but, when you move away from the policymakers, we work hard to set up a relationship with the policy planners has speech makers and people who are one step away because in this ms bureaucracy with so many flows is worn foron, it any advisor, whether historical or whatever, to understand the terrain of the policy maker. what are his other sources of information, perceptions, backgrounds. that is not always going to be for us, it is a

matter of continuing to adapt to one environment and peculiarity i think in the state department is that everybody is -- remember now, this is not official department policy here -- but everybody is really, really busy. very few have time to take home a book and read it but everybody almost is instinctively sympathetic to the historical narrative. it is the nature of the foreign service and diplomats in general so what we try to do is make honestey are even, to be , aware that we exist and that of what this targeted conscientious engagement is at the bureau level so our message and expertise is invested early enough in the process to where it flows to this overall process of considerations up the chain wecommand and one thing that do and we had the same kind of insight-out thing. the public material we do is

primarily foreign relations series which i said before 75% really of the overall workflow of the office but we also, we to setically have tried up a mechanism to capture the imagination of the department and take them back to their ants and it happened in incremental way that it might be helpful to talk about. during the outbreak of war in europe, we had one of our historians assist them in paris with their public diplomacy and we found this incredible story of our embassy of there being completely overrun as the financial system collapsed, as the transportation systems were nationalized, american citizens were trying to get home and needed help and she told that story and we decided, you know, what a wonderful story to extend to the other major capitalist because the themes and incidents

are different but the vividness of these stories are incredible and to take them back to their core mission of protecting american citizens and back to the first days of the birth of the foreign service so working on, we have got people covering paris and vienna and st. we will getnd london and create this composite picture and in the end created a monograph to the birth of the foreign service and getting ready to release it and kind of a dickens like chapter a week over a time to sustain the infest -- sustain the interest of the department in shaping the history of the world therein so again, we, like all of our colleagues here, pay close attention to our audience and

try to adapt what we do to remain relevant to their needs. >> i just want to add, it made me think of another world that we probably all play in different ways, which is again using the same translation, to be a kind of conduit between the historical thinking happening outside the government, right, that is being done by academics and scholars another institutions, we can do the way work of consuming that and beyond ourhat respective offices and me on our respective institutions so that those within the institutions who are engaged with doing the work of policymaking in informing what happens from governments and making decisions can have a better understanding scholars are saying on a

particular issue. we are uniquely positioned by our institutional roles to be that kind of connection and that kind of conduit and i suspect it is something that maybe we all do it different ways and do not self-consciously think of as part of our role but i think it is a unique one that we play if anybody wants to add anything to that. yes. i think one of the things lincoln said earlier resonated something that i think would be of value to a number of historians who are in similar positions in agencies where we are the only historian. there is an office of history but it is an office of one person. in the archival world we used to call people who were in iposition "loan arrangers." don't know what we call people in that position. if we can think more in terms of how we cannot only capitalize on

opportunities to convey to policymakers specifically within our organization's the value of the work we do or the work that has been done by other historians before us, that is one part of it but i think this other part, this approach that , lookingutting forth outward as well beyond your agency, drawing upon the academic community to support as a way of communicating to policymakers outside of your agency how history is relevant beyond just being what happened in the past. i think there are also in the ise of some of the work that do, there are people outside the agency who are deeply interested in invested in the history of of department, presidents foundations or doing kind of

their own public service work and i think we have to look at opportunities to drop on those resources as well. to be more collaborative and especially in many cases the departments of history within agencies are being whittled down. >> i want to share an experience. i think in the same terms air is describing. some of my biggest problems are capacity. it takes a long time to write a book. it takes a lot of your time and we are all of the fear, busy. -- and i think all of us here, we are dizzy. there are a lot of demands on us. writing a book can be tough. and thinking of terms of capacity, it has pushed me to

think more broadly about that community that thinks about your agency as well and how you can use them and work with them one of the experiences i had that i wildland fire.as it is a big story you see every summer on the news. it makes great television. you know, big flames. it is a big issue for the forest service and in the last 10 years it has become a huge issue because it is eating our budget. we do not fund it like other national disasters where fema comes in. what we do about fires comes out of our budget and kind of takes over our budget to where it is ,ow over 50% of our budget dedicated to fighting fires. it inhibits everything else we

are trying to do so it is a big deal for the agency and they have been trying to think about it for a long time and trying to get congressional fixes to this andix this object situation there is a director of fire and aviation. there is one person who spends a couple of million every summer fighting fires and he approach me a couple years ago and said, we need help. i need help for when i go to capitol hill and explain why we need this money. i would need this fixed. i need help in explaining how we got into this situation. he was looking at me as historian as a single person, i need you to help me out. and, what i had to do was kind of take out that ego of commissure, i am totally interested and i will write the book. i will put my capon and go out there and throw myself on the

precipice and i thought it would be totally cool. but then i thought about it and thought, i am not the right person for a couple of reasons. they deal with the things we talk about with history theory classes of, you know, we are striving for objectivity and how it would be perceived if i wrote the book explaining why we are in the situation that we need help with and how would i be critical of the agency if the word needed or how would it need perceived by congress if i threw the problem at their feet and said it was not our fault. we needed a essentially an outside expert. so using my expertise in my aeld, i went and found macarthur fellow winner in history who was the world's expert on the subject and helped sponsor a study about wildland fire policy and gave them

complete editorial control and the idea was that, here would be an objective outside person that as critical a look at our internal operations as they wanted and-or as critical objective look at congress's this study went on. it became a book. published.leted and for me, the crowning moment was sitting in legislative affairs behind the chief of our agency testifying to a senate energy committee sitting alongside that historian that had completed this study is that historian had been at the invitation of that committee because they wreck nice, here is an expert. dust because they recognized, here is an expert and we need expertise.

back as at to sit historian that a federal agency at the background of that where i helped facilitate that, but taking aed back from leading role because i knew that would be more beneficial so sometimes i think as federal historians, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor sometimes. , we can contract an outside objective voice to help those working around us sometimes and that was a real learning experience for me but i think it turned out a lot better than if i had tried to complete the same amount of work. it would not have been as good it was mucht and better received by all parties and so sometimes as a federal historian, we are thinking about those sometimes their radical

issues that come up in that first public history class i took of, what would you do if you had an employer that wanted you to write about them? how would you manage that? those things suck in. i was actually thinking about that. it would play better if maybe something else was writing this this time. but no, that was just one example. one way we approach the work sometimes. >> i think we all share historianunique as a which is to have you know, a bus or an institution you work for which is very different than being in and academy and at the back of your mind is always the question of institutional legitimacy and credibility of not only your agency but your particular office within the agency and as lincoln suggested,

whether you are perceived as objective or part of a political process is an essential consideration i think in any of these conversations. so, i have other questions but i would like to hold them off to open it up for questions from the audience on anything we have talked about already or anything else you would like to talk about. yes? >> remarks about how historians in agencies, how their work can be used or best be used. the question i have is a question i have not really heard and it could limit some of the forthrightness of the response but the question is more about evaluating how your work has been used right policy makers. i guess it is more a deal we

hear state question -- more a doe and state weston. if you can even wait how policymakers have used if you think it has been manipulated, or if it has been put to proper use or in between? >> great question. the question is about to what extent we have been able to evaluate how historical perspectives are heard by historians and agencies and put to good use by policymakers. that is not a question for me for sure. run atll take the first it. first of all, we in the office of the historian share the problem of feedback that others have spoken to here. the feedback loop is inconsistent i would have to say. a would have to say,

-- pretty general, some type of feedback on the type of material we provide because basically we stay with those people. i mean, a big part of providing the first assistance to somebody is setting up almost eight program that is sustained and then broadens. for example comment policy planning which is -- among the people we really want to be informed by this expertise we would -- and,o, i particularly when you offer something in the questions come back and there are times actually when you do not know for a couple years whether something that you sent out, you know, we provided material to the chain of command in 2013 for the new administration and over time things happened and we said, son of a gun.

they read that stuff. so it is gratifying. there is no normalized way really for feedback. again, that is why we work so hard to create that close relationship kind of at the bureau level because then you relationship.oing the most important thing you can do i think in any historical endeavor is that somebody mentioned, you get new crew coming into town and you do not know what they're looking for, what their orientation is. you provide them something but there has to be a feedback loop for you to get traction on that relationship and a sustained effectiveness with them. so i think to kind of summarize my answer which has kind of wandered hither and jan, we get feedback a high percentage of the time with key parts of our audience and we find our expertise within that cadre that is useful and we get sustained relationships which is most of all what we want to create.

>> yes, i think the example that comes to mind for doe would be that one of the big challenges facing the department over the been what years has to do with old manhattan project-area and world war which aretes, some of no longer operational, some which have radiation contamination, what you do in terms of decommissioning the solidity is, cleaning up sites, etc. for much of the early time that that problem was being addressed or grappled with, historians were not involved. started and is in that discussion, we had opportunities to provide our

perspective on the value of some of these sites that might exist outside of their continued operation in so the benefit of the historians having a voice in that discussion in terms of concrete outcomes for us has been the creation of the manhattan project national historic park which is being operated in connection with the national parks service and has sites, doe number of facilities for future generations to learn from, museums will be opened in conjunction with each. sites will be open to the public which have never been open to the public before and so i think providing a historical perspective on the value of those facilities and what they represent, the stories that they

tell, has in many cases resulted in their preservation in the face of potential destruction. >> i would like to just add that i think behind your question is a concern that historical information may be manipulated for political gain in the policymaking process. i think that is something that historians are always thinking about. i think it speaks to a again, the value of maintaining federal government historians offices and because of that having a andain kind of legitimacy credibility to those whom we offer historical information so manipulatives non- ball and not open to manipulation.

not suggest that cannot happen at all but i have found that most of the people in again, i am in a different branch in different contexts but most of the people i and surrounded by our deeply interested in being true to the history even if they are not historians, and they trust us and they really want to be honest and true to the record. questions? all, thank you. i think it is so important to have a panel like this that deals with the role of federal historians because there are a lot of you and you are kind of an invisible element in the profession i think from the perspective of someone. so it is great to have this panel and get insights into what you do and the particular challenges you face. my question is about

communication. historianssional have an audience of students and an audience of peers. if we are really lucky, we have an audience consisting of general readership, right? that you have a very distinct and different kind of audience you have to addressed and i think stephen nicely encapsulated this by talking about the special middle touring specialeople -- the people youain of the have to address and in many cases i think it is a hierarchal association as well. what kind of skills of our needed to communicate with our target that audience question mark how is it different from the way most professional historians communicate to their audiences?

>> who wants to take it? lincoln? jeff, no have some thoughts on that. >> that is one of the interesting challenges of things when i came on board, i was not necessarily prepared for. i had a brilliant, i figure was a dissertation someone wrote about the hiring and demographics within my agency and i thought, this is valuable. read this. and they said, no, you have to communicate that in a briefing summary. one sheet of paper. they want bullet points. they don't want complete sentences. it was different. it was code. i think what helps me prepare for that a little bit was actually a lesson i learned in

graduate school and it was an -- you who wrote on know, i was in a phd program and you know, trying -- in my wildest dreams, trying to write for a very specific audience in a very specific history journal that was -- you know, there is a formula for how those look. you are talking to your years. this advisor of mine was writing for these very public sort of newspaper supermarket type magazines about the old west and we would always hand them out and i kind of had a little attitude and thought, why are you giving this? you know? poo-poo'd it he taught me a lesson. this is the only avenue for some people. they're only access to history it is what they might see at a

grocery store so why should they not hear it from me? and he had to write it in a completely different way and i think as students, as faculty, historians, in the federal government, when we practice writing for different audiences that prepares us to be flexible enough to communicate as an op-ed for your local paper. not just the new york times. speaking to people where they are at. maybe it is a supermarket magazine or it might be a briefing paper. we deal with that a lot. for me, it is just being flexible and expecting you are going to be flexible. of saying, this is the way it has got to be done it is more, i have an essential truth i need tutorial or some essential information in letting put it into the way that you consume that information. so here's your one-pager. take it. >> that is a great question.

i will answer it in two ways. first, the internal way. the internal process that goes on in my mind. and how i interact with my colleagues across the library and across nih. as i mentioned before, i am really fortunate to work with people from a variety of disciplines. i have historians on my stuff but i also have librarians, archivists, technical information specialist, curators. these are people who are trained in a variety of ways and it is my responsibility as a manager, as a leader arguably with a historical bent to lift them up to be the best possible professionals to conserve our library and agency and the american people, plain and simple. so there is an internal part of it, the leadership that is my responsibility, my agency as it

nests within the larger institution. so there is a management, a leadership side. so to answer your question, what could be done in the discipline of history, the training of history, the more that individuals take forces outside the discipline, the more we engage in our work. the more we engage our colleagues of other disciplines to understand their perspectives and frankly, communicate with them. right with them, present papers with them, that i think can change a worldview to enable better communication with other disciplines with whom we work in our agency so that is the internal part. the external part is to piggyback on many of lincoln's you know, i started out writing academic history and i still do that in my spare time tremendouslyt is rewarding to write a blog post

or an article that does reach a greater audience. that reaches someone that may not have regular engagement with but we have a very popular blog and we get and some periodically of them are, i never knew that or learned that affect of history and that is tremendously rewarding for me or for others who make posts because we are reaching a broader audience and that is one way we measure our outcome is, who is reading our blog and how do we track those comments and respond to them. so to answer your question more specifically, when i came into the government i did not understand the concept of lane language, ok? -- of plain the language, ok? i understood the history of jargon. but plain language to reach a

broader audience in my writing both in internal writing papers and when i write for the public. i think the concept of plain language -- to add one more thing -- it took me -- and this is embarrassing but it took me several years to write my own op-ed. i have a very dear friend and atlanta, a fantastic journalist, who sat me down over a great dinner in a fine restaurant in atlanta and said to me, you need to forget about historiography --ic forget about the historiography comic forget about the jargon, and right. and i publish that many years ago. so to further answer your question, those who want to learn those answers, force yourself to write for a local newspaper or magazine. have to a journalist and ask them, how can i reframe the historical work that i've done for many, many years in graduate

school for a broader audience? this one journalist taught me how to do that. i did not read very well at the time but i've tried to refine that over the years. so, just to respond to your question. >> i was just going to say i think in terms of specific skill likein many ways i feel the skills that i developed over time that i draw upon in trying to do my job today are skills that i kind of learned on the job. i think there could be more emphasis placed on developing their skills as a graduate student in the process of learning how to be a historian. i think there is increasing acknowledgment of the need to develop these skill sets with the decline in job opportunities, but the first one i think, the first group of skills in that general area fall

under that and is something i was aware of and read examples of as a graduate sooner but i never did public history as part of my graduate school curriculum. the only opportunity i had to do that was in and internship. it is a skill you have to develop. jeff alluded to it. when you try to first time, you are not forget at it and it takes repetition and learning how to do it over time. i think it is something that could be toward more to graduate student specifically on the other thing i think specifically for federal historians is learning more about how to do institutional history, which again is something i learned about doing. i read examples of as a graduate student but i did not actually tried to do it myself until i was beyond graduates: and i think, you know, why not develop those skills earlier on and not leave it to learning on the job

process. >> to add to that, i think that i just want to and jeff's point about flexible thinking. demonstrating the ability to think flexibly and place historical flexibility into the processes. i think that is the essential skill. it is easy to think that we don't, i mean, i agree wholeheartedly with the port but i also think we do actually develop the skills of historians we just employ them a little bit differently. when you are a subject matter expert, you are being asked all the time to explain your book on this specific thing and where it fits within the broader historiography of american history or european history or whatever it is. if you have to think about, you historian i as a really interested in the history of this particular doctrine but

if i want to speak to someone who is interested in a broader way, i need to describe how this fits and that landscape and we sort of do that same thing i think when we talk about the value of historical thinking to various issues going on in government, is we prove we are and our thinking and narrow and our scope i said, i am a historian. his what i can tell you about the problem but i also understand all of the other dimensions of this problem for the agency and i also understand it is not just about the history. i think demonstrating the kind of flexible thinking and translating skills we already use another context into this context i think is a long way. so, i do not really want to of the last words i don't know if anyone else has anything to add before we wrap things up to that? the last have to have one. i just want to say, first of all, thank you so much to this esteemedreally

government historians who i am just honored and delighted to stand next to hand this has been incredibly illuminating and helpful for me and i hope that it has been for all of you as well in i hope we have been just a little bit to start to deepen the conversation about how to history andaking to to what the kind of practical on the ground realities are for historians. thanks to all. thank you to our panelists. enjoy the rest of the conference. [applause] >> you're watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. >> sunday night on afterward,

on herist sephia nelson latest book. she is interviewed by michael steele, former chair of the rnc. book providehis prescriptions for turning the important corner to recognize how important unity is? a refresher of civics, but i wrote it in a way messed up.a little america is a great country but we are a little bit confused right now about who we are and what we want. i think that is what we are wrestling with. this unity peace, we have to break it down. the problem in the last election, half the country feels one way and the other half feels another. "afterwards."t on

>> on "lectures in history," u.s. air force academy professor charles dusch teaches a class on the political and military situation in both the north and south during the fall of 1864. he describes how the presidential election, military engagements in atlanta, and the emancipation proclamation contributed to contemporary opinions about whether the civil war should continue. this class is about 50 minutes. charles: thank you very much. take your seats. last class before thanksgiving break. welcome. today, the topic is the fall of 1864. ok? you got to listen to a different version, a northern version by a country singer, who did civil war songs from the north.