A clear grasp of our past will be essential in finding our way through this maelstrom. To understand our current crises and imbalances, we need to know how we got here. To find our way to solid ground, we need to learn where every avenue might lead. The ways that local politics can have a national impact, the power (and failures) of popular protests, the ways in which racism and economic imbalance have led us to the present day: All of these things and more can be gleaned from pairing past and present to understand complex events as we live through them.
Historians will have much to say in this process of discovery, both in content and method. In recent years, our public sphere has slipped from truth, to “truthiness,” to truthlessness. If we have any hope of arresting that descent, we need historians to bring accuracy, analysis and evidence to public debate. In the process, they will bolster and protect the historical record — the basis of our profession and a fundamental key in defining our lives and times. The study of history is vital to understanding who we are as a nation. During the 2020 election cycle, that study has an urgency as well.
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Historians will have much to say in this process of discovery, both in content and method. In recent years, our public sphere has slipped from truth, to “truthiness,” to truthlessness. If we have any hope of arresting that descent, we need historians to bring accuracy, analysis and evidence to public debate. In the process, they will bolster and protect the historical record — the basis of our profession and a fundamental key in defining our lives and times. The study of history is vital to understanding who we are as a nation. During the 2020 election cycle, that study has an urgency as well.
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To protect democratic governance — to want to protect it — people need to know how it works and what it offers. To understand the risks at hand, they need to know their rights, how they were won and withheld in the past and how they remain threatened today. They need to know their history in all its complexity, diverse and conflicted, aspiring and deeply compromised, informed by voices new and old.
Of course, there is no single interpretation of our history. We discover and rethink things. We disagree. Meanings are shaped, reshaped and reassigned. New storytellers tell new stories. Old stories fall away. History isn’t set in stone.
Nor does history offer ready answers. As much as we would like it to, it doesn’t repeat. Even so, during the electoral frenzy that is already unfolding, confronting our past will arm us for the present. The defense of democratic governance demands no less.
-Dr. Joanna B. Freeman, historian at Yale University
Of course, there is no single interpretation of our history. We discover and rethink things. We disagree. Meanings are shaped, reshaped and reassigned. New storytellers tell new stories. Old stories fall away. History isn’t set in stone.
Nor does history offer ready answers. As much as we would like it to, it doesn’t repeat. Even so, during the electoral frenzy that is already unfolding, confronting our past will arm us for the present. The defense of democratic governance demands no less.
-Dr. Joanna B. Freeman, historian at Yale University
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