History 368/668
History and Public Policy
Fall Semester 2011
Instructor: Arnita Jones
Wednesdays 2:30 to 5 pm
Office Hours: Wednesdays 1-6
Contact Information: 703-875-0419 or
ajones@american.edu
Course Description
History and Public Policy focuses on the many ways in which history and historical
context are used by policy and decision makers in various settings, including government
and non government agencies, the congress, special commissions and task forces, and
both field and headquarters operations in the military.
In this course students will examine how historians in both executive and legislative
branch federal historical offices work to preserve institutional memory, field requests for
specific background on policy issues and respond to information requests from the
public, researchers, and journalists. We will also explore the role of historians in the
work of special commissions established to aid both government and their publics
understand such extraordinary event as the 911 attacks on the United States or NATO‘s
failure to prevent the massacre of thousands of civilians in Srebrenica. Finally, the last
segment of the class will concentrate on the policy issues surrounding history education
reform, both in the United States and abroad, with particular focus at how the history
curriculum is used to address nation building, peacemaking or reconciliation efforts.
Course Methodology
Classes will be a combination of short lectures, discussion of readings and reports on
students‘ own research as well as an occasional guest speaker, film or podcast. Students
will conduct at least one oral history, reviews of books, articles, websites or documentary
collections, and three policy papers.
Evaluation and Grading/Formal Requirements and Grading
Class participation: 20%
Three short policy histories: 30%
Note: graduate students will write two short and one lengthier paper
Two of the following, which will be written and also the subject of a class report: 20%
book review;
review of a collection of articles on an approved theme;
review of a targeted website or documentary collections;
oral history of individual with experience related to the content of the course
Note: graduate students will report in all four categories
See Appendix to the syllabus for specific instructions on papers and reviews
Midterm: 10%
Final Exam: 20%
Required Readings
Books:
Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History.
(Modern Library, Random House, 2008.).
911 Commission Report, various editions, 2004.
Elizabeth A. Cole, Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and
Reconciliation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
Articles: On electronic reserve at Blackboard, JSTOR, or other electronic databases
as listed below
August 31 INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY AND POLICY
Discussion of course content and goals; explanation of written assignments; discussion of
student goals; bibliography
Assignment: Macmillan, Chapters 1-3; Robert Dallek, ―The Tyranny of Metaphor,‖
Foreign Policy, Nov. 2010, pp. 1-12
September 7 THE FIELD OF POLICY HISTORY
Assignment:
Hugh Davis Graham, The Stunted Career of Policy History: A Critique and an Agenda,‖
The Public Historian, 15:2 (Spring, 1993) 15-37.
Robert Kelley, ―The Idea of Policy History,‖ The Public Historian, 10:1 (Winter, 1988),
35-39.
George McGovern, ―The Historian as Policy Analyst,‖ The Public Historian, 11:2
(Spring, 1989) 27-36.
Julian E. Zelizer, ―Clio‘s Lost Tribe: Public Policy History Since 1978, ―The Journal of
Policy History, 12:3, (2000). 371-394.
September 15 CASE STUDIES IN POLICY HISTORY
Assignment: Susan M. Reverby, ―‘Normal Exposure‘ and Inoculation Syphilis: A PHS
‗Tuskegee‘ Doctor in Guatemala, 1946-1948, Journal of Policy History, 23:1
(2011) 6-28
Zachary Schrag, ―How Talking Became Human Subjects Research,‖ Journal of Policy
History, 21:1 (2009) 3-37.
Maris A. Vinovskis, ―Federal Compensatory Education Policies from Ronald Reagan to
George W. Bush.‖ Presentation to Congressional Briefing, available at
http://nationalhistorycenter.org/from-a-nation-at-risk-to-no-child-left-behind-federalcompensatory-education-policies-from-ronald-reagan-to-george-w-bush/
September 21
HISTORY AND DECISION-MAKERS
Assignment: MacMillan, Chapters 3-6, 8
Graduate Student Assignment: Chapters 1, 2, 13 from Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R.
May, Thinking in Time. (The Free Press, 1986)
*First Policy Paper due in writing and for presentation in class
September 28 HISTORY PROGRAMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT I
Lecture – Overview, history of federal history programs, Jones
Review web site of the Society for History in the Federal Government at www.shfg.org
and be prepared to discuss an additional web site describing a Federal History
Program; list to be distributed.
October 5 HISTORY PROGRAMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT II
Assignment: Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense on Project Minerva, speech
delivered to the Association of American Universities, April 14, 2008
David Ignatius, ―An Army That Learns,‖ Washington Post, July 3, 2008
Additional graduate assignment: Wayne E. Lee, ―Mind and Matter—Cultural Analysis in
American Military History: A Look at the State of the Field,‖ Journal of
American History, 93 (March 2007), 1116-42.
*First Report Due
October 12 HISTORY AND THE LAW
Litigation and historians, lecture, aj
John Souter, ―History and Legitimacy in Judicial Decisions,‖ American Academy of Arts
and Sciences Program on ―The Public Good,‖ Washington, DC, March 9, 2009.
http://www.amacad.org/events/civilSociety/civilSociety.aspx or go to American
Academy web site, click on events, then recent events, then recorded events,
scroll to date and go to Souter, video
John Hope Franklin, Brown vs. Board of Education@ The HistoryMakers – You Tube
Assignment: John Hope Franklin, ―The Historian and the Public Policy,‖ Race and
History, LSU Press, 1989.
Michael Grossberg, ―Friends of the Court: A New Role for Historians,‖ Perspectives in
History, November 2010.
Graduate Student Assignment: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and Sandi E. Cooper, ―Women‘s
History Goes to Trial: EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Company, Signs, Vol. 11,
No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 751-779/
Katherine Jellison, ―History in the courtroom: The Sears Case in Perspective,‖
The Public Historian, vol. 9, #4 Fall 1987.
October 19 – MID TERM EXAM – Will last one hour
HISTORY IN PEACEMAKING AND RECONCILIATION
Steve York and Neil J. Kritz, ―Confronting the Truth,‖ film, United States Institute of
Peace, 2007
October 26 HISTORY IN PEACEMAKING AND RECONCILIATION
Assignment: Macmillan, Chs. 4-6, 8.
Eric Foner, ―History in the New South Africa,‖ in Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Hill
and Wang, 2002.
Richard Byrne, ―Rebuilding Balkan Bridges,‖ The Chronicle of Higher Education,
February 10, 2006.
Charles Ingrao, ―Introduction,‖ in Charles Ingrao and Thomas A. Emmert, Confronting
the Yugoslav Controversies, Purdue University Press, 2009.
November 2 HISTORY BY COMMISSION
Overview of the role of history and historians in the use of commissions - lecture, Jones
Assignment: 911 Commission Report, various editions, Chapters 1-3, 7-9, 11
Ernest R. May ―When Government Writes History,‖ The New Republic, May 23,
2005
Graduate Student Assignment: Look at reviews of Philip Shenon‘s The Commission,
Hachette Book Group, USA, 2008
November 9 HISTORY BY COMMISSION – Srebrenica, a case study
Assignment: Hans Blom, ―Historical Research Where Scholarship and Politics Meet:
The Case of Srebrenica,‖ in Harriet Jones, Kjell Ostberg and Nico Randeraad,
Contemporary History on Trial, Manchester University Press, 2007, 104-122
Srebrenica Report, National Institute of War Documentation, April, 2002. Read the
Research assignment, Table of Contents, Press Release.
Graduate Student Assignment: Trudy Peterson, ―Temporary Courts, Permanent
Records,‖ United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 170, August 2006.
*Second Policy Paper due
November 16 HISTORY EDUCATION POLICY – Global Issues
Assignment: Elizabeth Cole, Teaching the Violent Past, Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.
Introduction, Chapters 1-4.
*Second Reports due
November 30 HISTORY EDUCATION POLICY
Overview of US History Education issues – lecture AJ;
Assignment: Cole, Chapters 4-9.
December 7 HISTORY EDUCATION POLICY – ISSUES IN THE US
Eric Foner, Lynne Cheney, Debate on National History Standards, film.
Assignment: Macmillan, Ch. 8
Linda Symcox, Whose History? The Struggle for National Standards in American
Classrooms, Teachers College Press, 1001, Chapter 6
Lynne V. Cheney, ―The End of History,‖ Wall Street Journal, October 20, 1994, A26.
Frank Rich, ―Eating Her Offspring,‖ New York Times, A19.
*Third policy paper due
December 19 – FINAL EXAM