National History Center

The National History Center will sponsor seven sessions at the American Historical Association’s Annual Meeting in Chicago January 5-8. Topics range from environmental history to Scotland’s role in the British Empire to the future of the history major in liberal education. The Center will also inaugurate a new initiative, “Historians, Journalists, and the Challenges of Getting It Right,” join in the reprise of 2011’s successful workshop, “Recognizing Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching,” and host an open forum and reception welcoming all meeting participants.

“Historians, Journalists, and the Challenges of Getting Right” is a joint venture of the History Center, the AHA, and two centers at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and the Norman Lear Center.  The collaboration is based on the idea that historians and journalists can learn from each other as they pursue accuracy and acuity.

“Imagine if journalists, under deadline pressure, had easy access to relevant historians in order to add depth and context to their stories,” said Martin H. Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center. “Imagine if historians who use journalism as primary source material had a more intimate understanding of how journalists craft narratives in real time.  Building bridges like that, which could help both professions, is one of the aims of this project.”

For more on the Getting It Right panels and the NHC’s other sessions, see an article on them in the December issue of the AHA’s magazine, Perspectives, at http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2011/1112/National-History-Center-at-the-Annual-Meeting.cfm.

In the last seminar of the fall semester, Thomas Bender of New York University asked whether American history is truly exceptional when seen in global context. Following World War II, he said, the dominant narrative of U.S. history posited “American exceptionalism.” That assumption shaped historical scholarship and Cold War policy. More recently a neo-conservative belief in exceptionalism has affected international and domestic history. But a global perspective reveals that our history is not “exceptional,” only distinctive. Every major moment in American history–Revolution, Civil War, Progressivism, and the New Deal, for example–is part of a larger transnational history.

Thomas Bender is University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at New York University. His scholarly work has been focused on intellectual and cultural history; his most recent work, however, has been devoted to exploring the ways in which American history has been embedded in histories larger than itself, some of which are global in extent. His books include Rethinking American History in a Global Age (2002) and A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006).

A webcast of Bender’s seminar is available at: American Exceptionalism in Global Perspective.

The Washington History seminar is a joint venture of the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. As always, it takes place at the Wilson Center in the Ronald Reagan Building, 13th and Pennsylvania, NW, in downtown Washington, DC (Federal Triangle Metro stop).  It is supported by a gift from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Reservations are requested because of limited seating: HAPP@wilsoncenter.org.

The Vietnam War cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans (and millions of Vietnamese) and convulsed U.S. politics and culture in the 1960s. Could it have ended years earlier, and with a far smaller toll? Evidence from long-hidden communist sources sheds new light on one of the war’s most controversial and enduring mysteries: it suggests–contrary to conventional wisdom–that a chance for direct discussions between Washington and Hanoi existed in 1966, years before the Paris talks.

James G. Hershberg is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and former director of the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project. His book Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam will be co-published by the Stanford University Press and Wilson Center Press in January.

John Carland, who has held official history positions in the Departments of Defense and State over the past twenty-five years as a specialist in the history of the United States and the Vietnam War, will comment.

As always, the seminar meets at 4 p.m. in the 4th floor conference room at the Wilson Center in the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, in downtown Washington, DC.  Please RSVP to HAPP@wilsoncenter.org.

At the November 21 meeting of the Washington History Seminar, Phyllis Leffler of the University of Virginia discussed a ten-year oral history project  on Black leaders and their roles in American life she  co-directed with Julian Bond.  In “Black Leaders and Leadership,” Leffler outlined the views of fifty Black leaders on such topics as family, education, and the inspiration of the Civil Rights movement. The lessons learned are significant and relevant for contemporary America, not least because of their focus on experiences that fueled Black success. Her talk was illustrated with film clips drawn from the interviews.

Phyllis Leffler is the Director of the Institute for Public History and Professor at the University of Virginia.  She is the co-author (with Joseph Brent) of Public History: A Philosophy and Paradigm and Public History Readings.   She has published award-winning articles in The Public Historian and The Magazine of Virginia History and Biography, and most recently, “Black families and fostering of leadership” (with Hephzibah Strimic-Pawl) in Ethnicities. 

A webcast of Leffler’s seminar is available at Black Leaders and Leadership.

A joint venture of the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars with the support of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Washington History Seminar welcomes individuals interested in the historical context of contemporary affairs. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend. Reservations are requested because of limited seating: HAPP@wilsoncenter.org.

In November 14th’s Washington History Seminar, Ronald Steel returned to the subject of his award-winning 1980 biography to reassess the place in history of journalist Walter Lippmann.

Lippmann began his career in 1910. He ended it six decades later as America’s most honored journalist. In the intervening years he edited the greatest newspaper of its day, Pulitzer’s World, wrote books on public opinion and public policy, created a newspaper column that was required reading, and left his imprint on virtually every important issue of American public life. Yet perspectives change from decade to decade, and today Lippmann seems a rather neglected figure. Steel asked: does his work have an enduring legacy for the present?

Ronald Steel is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California and twice a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center. His books include Pax Americana (1967), Temptations of a Superpower (1995), and Imperialists and Other Heroes (1971). His 1980 biographical study, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, received honors including the Bancroft Prize, the National Book Award, and the Book Critics Circle Award.

Steel’s seminar was also part of  a new initiative, “Historians, Journalists, and the Challenges of Getting It Right,” co-sponsored by the National History Center, the American Historical Association, and the Norman Lear Center and the Center for Communication Leadership & Policy at USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism. The project aims to help journalists and historians learn from each other as they pursue the twin goals of accuracy and acuity.

A webcast of the seminar is available at Reassessing Walter Lippmann.

A joint venture of the National History Center and the Wilson Center with the support of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Washington History Seminar welcomes individuals who are interested in the historical context of contemporary affairs. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.  Reservations are requested because of limited seating: HAPP@wilsoncenter.org.

The Civil Rights revolution has been an inspiration to oppressed minorities around the world and is now an essential component of both national and regional civic culture. But was it also a revolution in economic life?  Contrary to many pessimistic accounts, economic gains for black southerners were real and substantial, sufficient to reverse a fifty-year pattern of black outmigration from the South. With few exceptions, economic historian Gavin Wright contended in November 7th’s Washington History Seminar, southern whites did not lose economically from desegregation; instead they also gained.

Gavin Wright is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History at Stanford University. He received his PhD in economics from Yale University and is a past president of the Economic History Association. His books include:The Political Economy of the Cotton South (1978); Old South, New South (1986); and Slavery and American Economic Development (2006).

A webcast of Wright’s seminar is available at Economic Effects of the Civil Rights Revolution.

A joint venture of the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center, with assistance from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Washington History Seminar takes place on Monday afternoons at 4 p.m. at the Wilson Center. Graduate students are especially welcome.

The National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars have released the schedule for the last five meetings of the Washington History Seminar.  The seminar meets weekly on Monday afternoons at 4 p.m. in the 4th floor conference room at the Wilson Center, 13th and Pennsylvania, NW, Washington, DC.

Economic historian Gavin Wright of Stanford will discuss the economic effects of the Civil Rights revolution on black and white southerners on November 7. On November 14, Ronald Steel will reassess Walter Lippmann, returning to the subject of  his seminal biography, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, on the 30th anniversary of its publication.

On November 21, Phyllis Leffler will report on the multi-year oral history project in which she and Julian Bond have asked African-American leaders to reflect upon the state of black leadership in America. On November 28, James Hershberg of George Washington University will explore rumors that the Vietnam War could have been ended years earlier.  And Tom Bender of NYU will close the semester on December 5 with an inquiry into whether American history is indeed exceptional.

The schedule for the entire semester is available at http://nationalhistorycenter.org/weekly-history-seminar-schedule/fall-2011-schedule-washington-history-seminar/

The seminar is supported by a grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.  It is open to the public. Graduate students are especially welcome.

In this seminar, British scholar Nigel Ashton explored both United States and Jordanian decision-making in the run up to the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He considered in particular the claim made by the former CIA station chief in Amman, Jack O’Connell, that he passed a specific warning about the Israeli plan of attack to King Hussein of Jordan. He assessed new evidence O’Connell presented about the so-called U.S. green light to Israel in his recent book, King’s Counsel.

Nigel J. Ashton is Professor and Chair of the International History Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (2008); Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War: The Irony of Interdependence (2002); and Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations and Arab Nationalism, 1955–59 (1996).

A webcast of Ashton’s seminar is available at Missed Opportunities for Peace.

The Washington History Seminar is a joint venture of the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center, with assistance from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. To be added to the list for announcements, please e-mail Marian J. Barber at mbarber@historians.org.

The National History Center and the Council on Foreign Relations hosted a conversation with historian Jonathan Steinberg at the CFR’s New York headquarters on Thursday, October 20, 2011. Titled “Personality and Power: The Case of Otto von Bismarck,” the program was based upon Steinberg’s recent book, Bismarck: A Life. History Center Director Wm. Roger Louis moderated the discussion.

Steinberg is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania.  The meeting is part of a series featuring prominent historians who examine the events, times, and individuals that shaped foreign policy as we know it today. A webcast of his session is available at NHC-CFR: Steinberg on Bismarck.

What does it mean to be a person without a country? The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution enshrined the long-held principle that birth in the United States conferred citizenship. But efforts are now underway – by some members of Congress and by some state legislators – to challenge that concept of American citizenship as a birthright. France has deported hundreds of Roma on the grounds that they have no right to stay as citizens of the European Union. Two weeks ago India and Bangladesh announced that they intend to address the stateless condition of some 50,000 Biharis on their border.  In the October 24th Washington History Seminar, Linda K. Kerber examined these developments in the context of the history of statelessness in the 20^th century, focusing on the evolution of the sixty-year-old UN convention on refugees and stateless persons, a document the United States has not signed.

A past President of the American Historical Association, Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor of History at the University of Iowa. In her writing and teaching she has emphasized the history of citizenship, gender, and authority. Her books include No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (1998). 

A webcast of Kerber’s seminar is available at Statelessness in 20th Century America.

The Washington History Seminar is a joint venture of the National History Center and the Wilson Center, with assistance from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.