Symposium: Public History in Authoritarian Times
Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The MacMillan Center, Yale University
Free & open to the public
In-person only
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"Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it should be enlightened."
President George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
Since the 1970s, public history has become an important dimension of the historical profession. For decades, worldwide scholars, museum staff, community organizations, and others have worked together to make historical education accessible and relevant to broad publics. By emphasizing the experiences and perspectives of previously underrepresented people, public history research and programming offers nuanced and rich interpretations of dominant historical narratives of the past.
The work of public history combines traditional archival research with attention to objects, untold stories of place, memory, multiple points of view, community traditions and oral testimony. The field of public history provides possibilities for diverse and democratic understandings of the past. This is especially crucial for efforts to come to terms with the most challenging aspects of history.
Increasingly, recent efforts to accurately and honestly grapple with historical complexity in classrooms and cultural institutions are under attack. These attacks on public education, and on the independence and integrity of key institutions such as the National Park Service and the Smithsonian, demonstrate that the current presidential administration in the United States is waging war against historical and critical truth-telling. In exchange, they support uncritical “patriotic” education, which emphasizes American nationalism and exceptionalism. Never before has the executive branch of government, with its enormous resources, waged such a battle against the practice of history and the diffusion of knowledge.
Long committed to public historical education in its many forms, the Gilder Lehrman Center seeks to provide a forum to discuss these alarming trends. Scholars and supporters will offer comparative perspectives on historical reckonings with authoritarianism, while analyzing current realities with an eye toward building strong public history foundations for the future. We invite you to join us in November for respectful engagement with these topics.
10:00am
WELCOME: David W. Blight (Director, Gilder Lehrman Center; Sterling Professor of History, Yale University)
10:15—11:45am
Panel 1: Comparative Perspectives on Contested History in Public Spaces
This panel will address what happened to history itself in the aftermaths of various authoritarian regimes and state actions. How have or have not governments attempted to face the past in official ways, through cultural institutions such as museums, public education, monuments, and memorials?
Moderator: David Blight (GLC Director and Sterling Professor of History, Yale University)
Speakers:
Jennifer Allen (Associate Professor of History, Yale University): Postwar German history and reckonings with the Third Reich and the Holocaust
Shirley Higuchi (Chair of the Board of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation): Illegal imprisonment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II
Stephen A. Small (Professor of the Graduate School, Department of African American Studies, University of California-Berkeley): International commemorations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Jonny Steinberg (Senior Lecturer in the MacMillan Center and in Political Science, Yale University): Democratic South Africa's reckonings with apartheid
11:45am—1:00pm: LUNCH BREAK
1:00pm—2:30pm
Panel 2: The Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, Here and Now
Former staff members and affiliated scholars will discuss the on-the-ground threats to these important organizations, along with ideas about how to maintain fortitude and resilience.
Moderator: Stephen Pitti (Professor of History and of American Studies; Director, Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration, Yale University)
Speakers:
Gerry Seavo James (Deputy Director, Sierra Club Outdoors for All Campaign)
Kate Masur (John D. MacArthur Professor at Northwestern University)
Chuck Sams (Inaugural director of Indigenous Programs for the Yale Center for Environmental Justice; first Native American to serve as director of the National Park Service, 2021-2025)
Sarah Weicksel (Executive Director, American Historical Association)
Chad Williams (Tomorrow Foundation Chair of American History and Professor of History and African American and Black Diaspora Studies, Boston University)