Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Public Policy Centers Roundtable 20180123

Importance of these institutions and their methods for Public Policy centers on the importance of the institutions and the methods for educating and offering information no the public. This is an hour and a half. All right. We can begin the session. Thank you to all of you who have weathered the snow and the ice to be here this afternoon. Welcome to this panel, history and Public Policy centers sponsored by the National History center. Im nick mueller, president and ceo emeritus of the World War Ii Museum in new orleans and before that enjoyed a 32year career at the university of new orleans and i will say more about that after the panelists are introduced. We are going to take a little bit of a different approach today and rather than having each panelist stand up to talk about their respective panelists and i. N. S. Tunstituteinstitutes over in a few moments each, and when we then with the work that their centers are doing in the course of the remarks. So i am going to introduce briefly each of the panelists, and perhaps you can raise your hand as i mentioned your name and for audience that is here. And i suspect that many more who are not affected by the weather, but watching on cspan, and so thank you cspan for covering this panel which is being telecast. First, brian vella is the Dorothy Danforth professor at the university of virginia, professor of history. And john hopkins, ph. D. And author of many books, association of state, and 2015, government out of sight in 2009. The Miller Center is a nonpart san affiliate of the university of virginia specializing in political scholarship and political history striving to apply the lessons of history to the worlds most pressing governance challenges. Aby green cannot be with us, because he was caught by the snow in boston. If you can hear us, we miss you. He is drek r or the of the Scholars Strategy Network and using research to strengthen Public Policy and strengthen democracy. So we need to hear from him. And rob habers is here, and president of the george c. Marshall foundation at lexington, virginia, and a cambridge ph. D. And previously serving a as the executive director of the National Churchill museum. The Marshall Museum is a nonpart san body dedicated to the perpetuation of the legacy of the former u. S. Chief of staff and secretary of state general marshall, the man who quote won the war and won the peace after world war ii. The center, the foundation emphasi emphasizes the Leadership Qualities of marshall and the exemplary character of Educational Programs and archives and research and library museum. Dane kennedy is the elmer lewis kizer professor of history at the George Washington university and author of five book, and also director of the National History center which is sponsoring this panel today. National History Center is an affiliate of the American Historical Association, created in 2002 to reinforce the Critical Role of history, and the historical knowledge of the role that h history and historical knowledge play in public Decision Making and civic life and the center facilitates historical inquiry and debate an ensures that scholarship and knowledge of professional historians are disseminated to the public effectively. David n. Myers to my left, is say di and ludick khan chair at colombia university, and he is author of three books in the fields of modern jewish and intellectual cultural history. He has beenn een a katz univers studies in jerusalem and was from 2004 to 2009 the director of the ucla center of jewish studies. And jason steinhower. He is a public historian with the university of villanova. He has a very diverse experience in museums, archives, government, academia, the library of congress, the New York Historical society and the museum of jewish heritage as well as the rock n roll hand of fame, and like that one, but all of those are important. Lepage Center Brings the hor th cal college to bear and leading voice for greater consciousness among citizens and industry leaders. For myself, my area was european history at the university of new orleans and the ph. D. And masters from the university of north carolina. After 32 years as the professor, dean, vice chancellor and the last post was president of the research and technology park, Steven Ambrose and i, some of you may remember, the late Steven Ambrose decided that the country needed a National Dday museum and we set about in 1990 to do that and i became the chairman and ceo and ultimately the president of the dday museum which got a new mission from congress a few years later, and so we are now the national World War Ii Museum in the city of new orleans and serving members and people from all over to the country with almost 700,000 visitors. We will talk a little bit more about them, but there is also a new institute for the study of war and democracy, and a world war ii media and Education Center which are part of the story which we are going to talk about just here in a moment. So, there are mikes up here for the audience as well as for cspan. And i will ask questions and we will go down the row, and get answers from our various presenters of a couple of minutes each. I will play the whiphand here, and try to keep everybodys answers short so that everybody can get a chance to respond. If general approach we are taking today is to look at the broader question of who cares what historian has to say after all. How do we stay relevant and become more so perhaps. Most of the centers and institutes that we know of today enjoyed the first appearance late 19th century as various scholars have began to specialize in Research Endeavors and higher educations and largely to the scholarly audience, and now todays h historians face a different idea of the institute or the center at a university, and sometimes not at the universities, because today, we are in a world where many of the prospective audiences, and people who might consume what we have to say live in and online world. So reflecting 21st Century Technology and communications. So we find these traditional d models that have grown up over the last century or so now living with a very dynamic crowded public space where the messages emanate from many, many sources, and that is, those sources are amplified now by the powers of digitization. And the question is for the panelist, and the couple of parts for question is anyone listening . Is anyone listening or does anyone care what our centers and institutes are doing or in my case museums . So we can alling a xwree that we are living in an attention deficit society, and online chatter of enormous proportions compared to what existed certainly a year ago and the first part of the question is ohow do all of the historians and the representatives in the institutes represent here to break through the noise. Break through the noise and provide historical insight and other critical insight. So breaking through the noise is part of the question, and who are the target audiences, and are they listening to you. And so, rob, we will start with you. Thank you, nick. Good afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be here. The george c. Marshall foundation as nick said located in lexington, virginia, been there since 1964 sitting on the post of the Virginia Military institute, and general marshall is a graduate of that institution. Prior to that in washington, d. C. , from 1953. So we have sat in lexington working on somewhat the internal part of marshalls life. In four volumes of the autobiography, and the four papers of marshall in 1987 and in 2016 completed, so a lot of time and effort, but really those great scholarly endeavors are emblematic of the old world and how do you engage the young about general marshall and all he did as a secretary of state when the first point of entry is perhaps the four substantialbio how are you doing it . Trying to connect the h historical marshall with the present. So all kinds of questions that are arising at the moment, and the role of the United States in particular at the moment in the modern world, and the end of that post war consensus that has been with us since 1945, and general marshall is going to be the core at the heart of that with the marshall plan, and the secretary of state through lectures and through short videos and through blogs that speak to the big news event, and we find that we have growing traction virtual traction many that people comment on the blog posts that connect either our paper collections through the three dimensional collection s with the modern events of the modern world, and then the next step is to draw them in person for the building, and you dont have to go to lexington, virginia, and i drew it there from there this morning, but you have to make an effort to come to visit uses, and the lectures in the evening and the lunchtime build on that growing virtual presence. Primarily, you are focused on getting to the marshall center, and this is the primary way of reaching the audiences. We are trying to get the people to visit us on site and endeavoring to take the lectures and programs beyond lexington. Dane . Yes, first of all to your initial question, and that has to do with are we reaching an audience and how. We need to recognize and we do on some level that there is an innate history that is foundational to everyone, and you can see it in the variety of ways with the fascination of genealogy and people are tracing the roots genetically, and the powerful influence that certain History Museums have such as the one that nick has helped to found in new orleans. And so the fact is that historians are speaking to audiences to recognize that history has some kind of value, and one of the challenges that however face those of us who work in the academic world as historians is how to reach that audience in a way that is compelling to them, and also reflects the kinds of Specialized Knowledge that we have. Part of it is framing the usage of language and understanding and how history has understood and conceptualized by different groups and audiences. So let me turn to the second part of the question which has to do with the natural History Center itself which i direct. It is located here in washington, d. C. It is an affiliate of the American Historical Association and our mission is to bring history and historian no tto th broader Public Policy conversations. And no better place to do that than washington, d. C. We focus on the particular audiences. So we are not trying to reach sort of through the general audience that would go to say the World War Ii Museum or the people interested main the jean yogology, but focused first and foe most on the capitol hill and the policy community in washington, d. C. , itself, and one of the ways that we do this is through a congressional briefing series that we have run for five or six years now which identifies the topics which are facing congress currently and trying to at least staffers and okayicationly congressmen who attend the briefings some sense of the Historical Context for these issue, and how an understanding of that historical background can be of benefitt in terms of defining and shaping current policy issues. We also have a weekly lecture series that we do in conjunction with the Wilson Center which is going to bring the historians to talk about the work they have recently done that has some kind of policy dimension to it. And finally, we also try to, and are are trying to develop a program which brings some of those techniques in terms of congressional briefings and how they are done to producing a briefing paper and so on to the classroom. And so, developing a full set of techniques for allowing history teachers to better communicate to their students and get their students to more actively engage in the use of history as a vehicle for understanding not just the past but a per spspect on the present. And so you are focusing on the perhaps, the major effort on the policy briefings to influence the staffers, and understand, better understanding of history, and therefore a larger impact on the hill in congress than your public lectures and impact. So those are the three good areas, and david, you want to add on. Yes, it is a great pleasure to be here today. I am wearing two institutional hats. First as the inaugural director of the luskin research scenter ats ucla and the president and the ceo of jewish history in new york u which has a substantial public history role as well. I should say that the center at ucla, the Luskin Center arose out of considerable demand from the multiple constituencies, and from the students and the faculty colleagues as well as from the general public that we introduce a greater degree of historical knowledge and perspective into the policy, and this is something that we feel that we can do at the university. Especially in the current moment. I think that this is really important to the take stock of the moment that we have, nick. Yes, it is a time of oattention deficit, and yes, we live in a mediacrazed world in which the news cycle is reduced to seconds and not hour, and yet at the same time i sense and certainly my center is a creation is a reflection of this that people want to know how did we get to where we are . How did we follow this path to where we are . In a certain sense we get to the moment of history where people demand a historical accounting to explain the current state of Political Affairs in the United States, and something that we mentioned briefly, nick, with before the session began, and how did the post world war ii order that was such a Stable Foundation for much of the western world seem to unravel so quickly. How did we achieve the current state or descend into the state of oincome inequality to the extent that we have . It seems to me that many people are seeking deeper and more profound answers to these central questions that are very much a function of the moment. It is not the case that as alex hagel said that we have reached a certain end of history, but it is a demand of more historical texture and perspective and it is, i think it is no accident that this gathering takes place with new and old centers devoted to the intersection of history and policy. So i think that what we try to do is to operate within the inner city and beyond. One of the things that we aim to do at the Luskin Center is to make the students and the faculty more receptive to the historically informed work that addresses the questions of contemporary relevance and to make it a legitimate and regular form of inquiry and discourse. Sot that is one of the things that we aim to do within the university that we expect will radiate out. From that, the plans are to produce historicallyinformed policy papers that reach actual Decision Makers at the local, regional and National Levels. It is exciting, and just chime in here, too, that to reinforce what you say about it, there is a thirstt for history out there. And so on the national World War Ii Museum, there is some evidence of that that we have now got approaching 6 million visitors since we were founded 17 years ago and this is a supply side museum. It is not demand drifen that the nation was clamoring for a dday or World War Ii Museum. So a half of the visitors from new orleans and 85 from out of state, and half say that the only reason they are coming is to see the museum. So there is a thirs oft great history well told and well presented. Just a brag point, we are ranked two by trip adviser, the largest database in the world, the number two Popular Museum in the United States and the world. You say who is the other company . Well, it ist metropolitan arch number one and the smithsonian and other museums are behind us now. What goes up is going to come down, and what the good news is that people are interested in history, and we have conferences and symposia, and you would not believe it, conferences have 500 or 600 people, and these are not most willy historian, but enthusiasts are want good history and they from 8 00 to 6 00 in the morning, with breaks to talk to the authors and the signed books, and so they are there because we are making history relevant and interesting to them. And we are also thinking about outreach and how to get the word out. So we have founded a new institute for the sdy of war an institutes and half of them with ph. D. S and world war ii media and education scenter that is going to take that once we are finished with the physical expansion, and go beyond. And now, we will look at the responses from you, jason, as well. Can everyone hear me . I apologize, because i am fighting a cold so if i keep doing that, that is why. I am really pleased to be here and i wanted to make one observation initially, which is to say that we all up here look pretty similar, and i think that one thing that is going to help us moving forward is to ensure that there is some diversity at the head of the institutions to create, so i hope that in the future when we do these types of panels that we can have women historians and persons of color and women and all genders to represent us, and this is going to with be relevant to a generation up and coming and increasingly diverse and looking at that type of face p and leadership roles to inspire them and make them interested in the career choices and fields. I also wanted to do a historian type thing here, and challenge a couple of the assumptions that we are sort of working under. I was struck when thinking about this panel and the questions posed about this notion of the attention deficit, and it kind of occurred to me that we will see if we agree or disagree, and there are not a lot of things that we Pay Attention to consistently, but we Pay Attention to the Current Administration, and con s consistently, Pay Attention to russia and north korea consistently, but people are paying attention to game of thrones which i have never understood and College Football is never old. So at tension deficit, and we have the capacity to some thing, and it is just that those things have to interest us, and history does not interest all people. So for those of us in the role, our challenge is not only to engage the people who are already interested in the history as dane said, that segment of the population that already does have that curiosity and the fundamental drive to learn are more of the past, and also to find people who get in the door, and may not be interested in history at all, and there is a sizable amount of people out there who may already do that. With how do you do that . What is interesting to me is that this is a study of history communication, and this is a pett project of mine if you follow me on twitter. He is live tweeting. Yes. And how we get people interested in things is not only about subject matter, how how we communicate, and where we communicate and who is going to do the communicating. All of those things are not necessarily taught or ingrand into the history pedagogy right now. We teach the history students how to research and analyze and write Journal Articles and books, but we dont always teach them how to be skilled communicators the and teach them how to be aware of the new digital platforms coming out, and not teach them how to be the fundamentals of the literacy fundament fundamentals and how to speak on camera and how do how to do a two twominute bite on msnbc. And so this is what myself and colleagues have been working on introducing into the history to fegs. And how we communicate, and who communicates and when we do it has an impact on the interest level that. Brings us to the Lepage Center, and that is who i am the director of, and so that i we are a new center, and only programming for the last five months. So i have metrics about the influence of reaching people, but it is too early to tell. But i will say that the idea of the center from baked into the existence is this notion that you dont have to come to the Lepage Center to become a part of it. So unlike what is happening in the Marshall Foundation for example, you can be a part of the Lepage Center anywhere in the world. You can access the blog, listen to the podcasts, connect on social media, and watch the events through the live streaming, and we are pretty much going to be taking the m model that the Lepage Center has multiple nodes and multiple entry point, and we can be a part of the community any time, and exit the community any time, and you will be welcomed. So it is a different conception of the scenter, and it is not a building, but we dont have a prime office, but we do have a room on villanovas campus, but our action does not happen there. It happens sort of out there in cyber space and everywhere and we are trying to apply the principles of the history communication to the building of the center from the groundup. I will also finally mention that we have two history communication fellows at the Lepage Center, and the first two lepage fellows of anywhere. And those are the graduate students specifically working with us to develop and hone the communication skills as well as helping us to communicate the historical scholarship through the new medium. I want to come back to the whole issue of the social media in a moment, but brian, you want to finish up with this first question in the round of questions . Sure. I will see if there is anything left to say, and answering the question of breaking through the noise and how to do that and i know that everybody in the panel believe s th believes th believes that the first order of noise is to produce first rate scholarship. We have not mentioned it that much, but it is very important, and one center that i am c connected with at the university of virginia the jefferson scholars runs the National Fellowship program which has funded over 150 postdocs who work specifically on understanding politics in the United States from a Historical Perspective and we work hard to get the firstrate scholars tenured at yale and northwest michigan to pay special attention to the policy implications that come out of their history, whether it is on the early republic or whether it is on the deregulation. And in the 1970s, so paying attention to producing the kind of scholars who can answer the questions that polly makers ask, that policy makers ask is extremely important. While most of the former fellows are in the tenure track or tenured at universities a number of them going into the Public Policy, and for sure they influence people around them just to give you two examples. A former fellow works at the National Security council and another fellow of the assistant secretary that they have done with Political Science and policy makerses ca care about t secondly, im a cohost on back story which is a podcast that tries to understand the history behind the headline, and we sboe deuce firstrate we introduce firstrate scholars such as a interview a ph. D. Student about a dissertation or a scholar who wrote a book 20 years ago and this is the way to inject firstrate scholarship into the public sphere and we have good metrics on that. The podcast is downloaded 90,000 times every week. It has been extraordinarily successful to bring scholarship to the audience. Finally, im involved with the Miller Center at the university of virginia which is trying to target specific policy makers and looking at how do we close the income inequality gap as was mentioned before putting together conferences, but then actually inviting people down to charlottesville, and we have an advantage because it turns out that people like to get out of washington, d. C. , and inviting the folks down and spending a day and a couple of days, and aba actually exposing them to the deeper policies of the history they worked on. I wanted to direct the issue of diversity as well, and that going back to the Fellowship Program, and our podcast, and that started out as three old white guys and we still have two old white guys, myself and ed ayer ayers, and peter olnoff our third white got wanted to retire, but we were upset about that, but we brought in nathan connolly, one of the leading historians of urban america after post world war ii who is an africanamerican middleaged man, and he would call himself young, and Joanne Freeman who is a historian of the early republic at yale. And i absolutely can tell you by changing the mix, and addressing jasons point by changing the mix of the host, and boy, ed, peter and i thought that we were so cool, and we had this diversity thing down, and by changing the actual mix of who the hosts are, we have changed the tone of the show, and that is something that i am very proud of, and the other thing is that the Fellowship Program has attract eded a majority of wome fellows and a significant proportion of underrepresented minor the tis. And so when people minorities. And so when people at the pbs newshour call me and say, can you recommend somebody on x, im more often than not, i can recommend an underrepresented minority, more often than not, i can recommend a woman, and this is really changing the faces of the scholars that appear on public television, on public radio. Those are all excellent contribution mos the discussion, and from the museum perspective, we have the issues of the diversity from the point of view from the the scholars and the historians perhaps that work in the institute, and we have hired some young women and masters in public history, and another one with the ph. D. And worked in french and german resources and in film and prop gaganda in the world war ii. So, some it comes from the historian, but from the museum, the diversity is also hand frld the exhibits themselves, and we pay close attention to telling the story of the africanAmerican Experience in world war ii, and the japanese american interment camps, and integrate it into the overall story, even if we are fighting two fascist military regimes, and so we are bringing the stories in, and the visitors n and engage with them on those issues and talk about them on the conferences, and the symposium. So there are a variety of ways to get at the diversity issue, but we all have to do a better job that the people who are doing the podcasts and who are in these kinds of programs, at the American Historical Association, and in our own p n conferences, and we are all working on that and work to do, and we are all going to be better, and lets come back to the social media, because it is interest ing thing that we do s that, and do a good bit on facebook and twitter, too, and see what anybody is doing here, and either through your own institute or through your Larger University that you reside within, and in the case of odane, it is within the American Historical Association, and are you reaching these younger audiences and millennials through the social media at all or do you care there . I certainly think that we can do more. The subject is george c. Marshall who is a dead white guy, and albeit, a very accomplished dead white guy. So with the younger we have to what it was he did. How he did it, and why he is still of interest and relevance today. The method of doing that can vary considerably, and we are, as well as trying to get people to lexington, were desperately trying to reach out beyond lexington to connect with anyone who may know of marshall, the marshall plan, and put marshall, the man, in context, of these bigger world events. So podcast is something were going to extend a very early exploratory route with in the near future. But it there are so many different platforms that its a challenge to see which actually work and which deliver the biggest bang for your buck. Dane . Actually, im going to turn this around a bit, since i was the one who organized the panel. And and direct the question to the people who i think sort of can speak to this more effect if ively. I can say, honestly, the National History center, we do some twitter, we have a facebook account, you know, blah, blah, blah. I wouldnt say were particularly good at it. In part, thats because we have limited resource. In part, its because of the au oaudience were trying to reach not necessarily the broad younger audience for particular reasons i can go into in greater detail. I certainly think that people like jason and brian have developed some real expertise in the use of these new medias, and can speak much more intelligently about how they can be brought to bear in our fields, so im happy to turn the microphone over, if you will. Well, id just say on the podcast, we were on 200 public radio stations, traditional public radio, and were very proud of that, and all of my colleagues over the age of 55 were delighted by that. And we made a decision, very consciously, to pull out of public radio, and create the show as a podcast and the numberone objective we had was reaching a younger, more diverse audience, and from all the metrics that we have, we are doing that. It didnt change overnight, and it was a real risk and all my friends who are over the age of 55 say, how come youre not doing the radio show anymore . But it really, in my opinion, has been worth it to do that, and i do think that by shifting you dont have to make such a radical change, but we decided really to create this as a podcast. This would get off topic, so i wont go into detail, but it turns out that thinking about a show as a podcast is quite different than thinking about it as a 52minute nprlike show with three breaks. Its giving us a lot more flexibility, i think its allowed us to take on more issues, to be a little more conversational. Typically about how long is each of your podcasts . 52 minutes with 3 breaks no, im kidding. Most of our podcasts are 40 minutes to 45 minutes. The point is, they vary, and you warning, you get complaints that you wouldnt think of. Its like, i was not done with my workout routine. Your show ended. How am i going to finish my workout routine . I wrote back, said, be grateful, you got out of the gym. Thats how we know were reaching a different kind of audience. Youre getting some feedback there. For sure. Were on twitter, in fact, were life tweve tweeting right. Now. You can follow us. I mean, if you really want to reach young audiences, you have to be on snapchat which we dont have the capacity to be on snapchat right now. All these new technologies, theyre tools and tools that can be kuz used for purposes, what youre trying to achieve. Its funny, we have history in our name but, in fact, were a center of contemporary events. We use history as ha lens to examine them. For us, where are discussions about contemporary events happen . They largely happen on twitter and largely happen through hash taggi ingin ins and things like. Of the social media we decide to embark on first, we decided to embark on twitter, we could interject our commentary and scholarship into existing conversations that were happening around topics that were important to us. So, for example, we spent this first semester of programming focusing a lot on the issue of fake news, but examining it from a historical prospective. What we determined what this question of fake news was actually sort of a moment of crisis of authority, right, traditional authorities from whom we received information that theres been a shift in how we trust them, where we get them from, so this fake news crisis emerging out of that. So we had historians and journalists sort of interrogating this premise and used our twitter as a way to interject blog posts, videos and other things into those conversations using the appropriate hash tags. For places like museums, facebook might be more effective. Facebook gives you a chance to be more visual and create more of a story. Museums and storytelling go hand in hand so well. That might be a more appropriate medium to use, and as brian pointed out, which is an excellent point, whichever medium youre using, that dictates the Communication Style and the communication format of the message youre trying to get across, which whosy history communication will never become obsolete. Theres always going to be more formats historians have to learn to work with and deal with and figure out how to communicate our scholarship through. I want to come back to something david said to the previous question which i admire, its trying to change the culture on the university campus, itself. Because if youre looking for hundreds of thousands of young and diverse people, not to mention a captive audience, go to any university. So i think we need we should not forget that the very people were looking toward, the future the citizens of tomorrow, as i call them are right with us. And we often ignore that. I think especially at policyoriented institutes. Right, i agree with that. I dont know if you want to add to that. Yeah, id love to just, if i may, first, thank you, dane, for diverting the question about social media to others because our center is not focused on amplifying at this point at this stage its social Media Presence beyond the bare necessity. What we are focused on is exactly what you mentioned, which is really shifting the culture of the university, and working with University Constituencies to make what is a standard assumption many other social sciences, namely our work can be applied to issues of contemporary relevance in everyday proposition. So where were focusing in our initial year is really on that cultural shift within the university at the undergraduate level, at the graduate level and at the faculty level by incentivizing graduate students and faculty to undertake Research Projects which have contemporary relevance or may, in fact, eventuate in a policy recommendation and introduce courses that expose students to policy consequences and dimensions of Historical Research through case study methods and otherwise. So i think an essential complement to all this work in forging new horizons through social media is attending to what many of us in the university know which is the university community. Absolutely. And from within really, really undertaking the revolution from within. Really making the connection between past and present much more seamless. And so thats that happens to be our way. If i could add to that, i mean, i think you see theres some synergy, in terms of the interest of many of these centers. One of the things the National History center introduced a year or two ago was a program we call the history and policy education program. And its actually a sort of framework for designing history courses that are directed toward thinking in term of their relevance to contemporary policy and we have fortunately just received a mellon grant that will allow us to sort of bring this on the road, if you will, and workshop it at various institutions. Wed love to work with you at ucla on this. And its envisioned to address exactly the point that david has made, that our most important audience remains the students that we have in our universities, and what we, i think, have failed to do as historians in the past, is to think more systemically about how we can teach in a way that communicates to our students the value of history for the co contemporary world that theyre facing. Thats one of the issues were trying to address as well. Thats a very similar challenge the History Museum would face, for example, and its not accidental that our Mission Statement at the national World War Ii Museum is to describe and portray the American Experience in the war that changed the world. Why the war was fought, its background and origins, how it was won, the second part, which are actually the war, the conduct of war, itself, in europe and asia, and then finally, what does it mean today . Thats the hardest part. What are the lasting legacies, how do we answer the question to people 50 years from now, so what . What did world war ii mean . What did it matter . How did it change my life . How did it affect me . Thats what people want to understand. We tried very hard in our exhibits to provoke people to see how it connects to them and we have also done surveys around the country and focus groups to identify between the ages of 18 and 80, theres 34 Million People in america who are interested in world war ii because of some personal connection. So theres a builtin relevance we got to go out and find those people. Now, going back to social media and facebook, just to show you in the museum world, the gorilla in the marketplace is the American Museum of Natural History and they have more than 1 million facebook likes just so you know what the hill is you got to klum and nea climb. And nearly 200,000 twitter followers. Were not doing so bad. We have great leadership in our Marketing Department and current president and ceo Steven Watson beyond the brick and mortar. Some six years ago the museum board and our staff agreed that we would digitize everything in our collection. 150,000 photographs, all the artifacts. Not only create Management Software programs to navigate 10,000 oral histories, to pull them up under your desks, wherever you are, whatever computer you use. So weve been moving toward the end of the brick and mortar phase, but thats what every university and every institution has to face, too. So some 30 years ago, i was an extension and Distance Learning was getting going at the university. It took me Hurricane Katrina before i hit myself in the head and said, why did it take a hurricane for me to realize you have to do the same thing with the museum . You got to reach out beyond brick and mortar and do really get the people where they live and to penetrate through facebook and social media. So, do we how do we respond on issues of Public Policy among groups . This group here, for example. Is it up to us to leave it to our individual ad hoc responses on issues of the day that are contemporary issues like the Confederate Monuments being taken down . Or do we say, like we did, well, thats not our war, our war thats a civil war issue, but certainly were in the process, in the work of saving history and thats taking down a part of history. So how do we do we organize this, do we do this on an ad hoc basis . Is there a need for historians in the National History center, perhaps, to assemble centers to find a more coordinated response to issues of the day . How do we do that . Is anybody thinking about that in your own centers . You want to go ahead . Sure, ill start by saying that one of the things that we decided we wanted to do at the laskin center is is to convene a meeting of various institutes and individuals engaged in work at the intersection of history and policy wife were calling the history and policy summit to just take stock of the day of the land, whats out there, whos doing this work with new vigor and attention . And we want to really see what the possibilities for collaboration are. I would say in our case, we understand that we cant be everything to everyone. We want to begin by focusing on local and regional issues in the main, where we already have contacts to policymakers. Where weve already produced work that has reached poli policymakers, in fact, made a difference. It seems to us that thats a good way for us to start. Well, the same time, were also supporting research that deals with both national and international policyrelated questions. So we think this is a good moment to bring people together and i know the National History centers also doing that. We will do it together with them. To see what kinds of work we can join forces on, and what each of us does independently. I would say that if one of the outcomes of this work of conv e convening is to create a formal or informal history lobby that can operate at multiple levels from local to international, then that will be very significant achievement. And thats what we think the moment demands of us. Speaking to the World War Ii Museum and my successor, Steven Watson, id say wed like to join in on that effort. We think its a great endeavor and worthwhile. Jason, you were going to Say Something . Yeah, its a really good question because i think at heart, for us, this gets to the heart of our discussions we had in setting up the center about strategy and how we were going to operate. We made a conscious decision to not be reactive to headlines. There are a lot of good sources for Quick Response to breaking news including the new made by history blog which is wonderful, if youve not checked it out. Its published by the washington post, run by nicoe hemmer and katie and brian brian rosenblat. I was going to say rosenbloom. Glad i did. Since its published through the post, that i have a mandate to be reactive to things that popping up in the news on o daily basis. Trump says something, they put up a piece that responds. Something happens with the confederate statue, they put up a piece that reresponds. Thats hard work. Readily hard to be constantly be sort of reacting to the news cycle and putting up fresh new pieces every day. We didnt feel like we had the band width width to do that. We took the approach were going to look for issues that are sort of bubbling below the surface and do more of a deep dive longterm examination of them. I mentioned the fake news. Another issue weve been doing programming around and blog posts around is the issue of erndle le endless war. Weve been in conflict in iraq and afghanistan for the past 17 years. My fellow who i mentioned at the Lapage Center, she has her memory only goes back as far as 2001. So for the entire time shes been alive that she can remember, weve been in iraq and afghanistan. So we wanted to look at the issue of endless war, think about how with e got to this moment and what historians can teach us about how we arrived at this place. While we do this series of programming, things like the ambush in niger came up, decisions about afghanistan came up. We resisted the urge to throw up a blog post right away or try to get on tv and talk about it right away. We just kind of stuck to the plan of addressing the sort of underlying issue. And so we feel like thats our contribution to the ecosystem. Hopefully it balances out some of the other things that are happening with what brians doing, and other people. Aeryeah, just to sort of go k to the National Fellowship program, Nicole Hemmer was a National Fellow. She has a ph. D. From columbia writing a very nice monograph but its when she was a National Fellow that we put her in touch with people who knew how to blog, people who would write oppeds and thats when she really got started and brian rosenwald, ph. D. From uva, whos writing a book about the impact of talk radio. The point im making is a lot of this goes back to the scholarship, itself. If we can just think, if we can nurture that scholarship and encourage people to do scholarship that sheds light on politics and Public Policy, then i think its pretty easy to figure out the tech yeeks to reach either policymakers or the public. Now, having an impact on the public or policymakers, thats a whole different kettle of fish, but we can at least try to get that firstrate scholarship in the hands, on the ipads of policymakers and informed public. I know everyone on this panel is doing that. Yeah, i just want to speak on behalf of the museum world, american History Museum and Holocaust Museum and our museum. In our case, we fundamentally believe that great exists, great conferences, great programs and all the tools you use to get out on social media depend first and foremost on having great scholarship and best minds on world war ii history, in our case, and its aftermath, at the table in designing every square inch of an exhibit to tell a story in an authentic way. And we have had from the last 15 years a group of president ial counselors with people like don miller, rich frank. We have a core of people who are kind of an Advisory Group that help look at us when were still in the work stage, trying to shape a story for the future, make sure its correct then the new institute for the study of democracy. We hired as our seniors, mary stone, professor ron sitino and another four, five, ph. D. S in that center to look at everything we do and also to have that network of the Advisory Groups to examine the history that we are trying to tell. To come back to the point, though, of a moment ago, the issue of history is news. I mean, our new world war ii meeting and Education Center, i mean, were thinking about a podcast around the idea of world war ii news. Well, theres news on world war ii every day. Somebodys either using or misusing, whether youre talking about the munich agreement or the good war or whatever, the atomic bomb, i mean, the just y justifications for munich were used by every president going into iraq, afghanistan, comparing it to pearl harbor, which is a lousy comparison. I dont think truman even had any button. No, he didnt have any button. Much less the biggest button. He didnt in fact, what he had to do was really to say, no, i mean, everybody was going to use everything they had to win that war, and, but those are issues that are current today, and as we talk about, loosely, now, about the button to begin another nuclear war, whats the role of historians to react . I mean, how do we react to those big issues of the day . And youve taken a more deliberate role, jason, and are there other ways that some of you are exploring . Dane . I can speak about the congressional briefing series, for example, and that is much more directly reactive to events as they occur. So, for example, shortly after trump came to office and began to sign a series of executive orders, we organized a briefing on capitol hill on the history of executive orders. You know, how unusual was this . What how can we understand the context within which this occurred . Shortly after the events in charlottesville, we organized a briefing on Confederate Monuments. The history. How did they win and how did they come to be . And how does this help us to understand what role they play in public memory . We have done briefings on sort of historical parallels to the zika crisis, when that was at its height and congress was debating funding for that. I could go on. So, so for us, in fact, timeliness is absolutely essential for this congressional Briefing Program because its hitting it at that moment that makes it useful, in fact, to congressional staffers and others. As well as sort of the broader policy community in washington, d. C. And the went to one of your briefings on Civil Military relations, given the Current Administration of generals. It was an outstanding briefing, and its a way to bring good history to an understanding to people, to staffers, who are trying to advise their senators, their congressmen and congresswomen on how to react to policies and issues with regard to that. Anybody else want to comment on yes, rob . We dont have anything as formal as what dane does, but we have certainly seen, and i would echo who dane said about, i think fundamentally people have an interest in history, innate interest in history, where they came from, how we got to where we are today. If you take the view, its debatab debatable, hard evidence, perhaps, is difficult to come by, history is not taught as well as it once was or history isnt being taught at all. I often hear that from older constituents of the Marshall Foundation. More and more people are tending to look to organizations such as ours, the Marshall Foundation, because of its longevity, because of its association with general marshall as being something of an authority. Ill get phone calls or our librarian will get phone calls, well, i saw x or y or z on the news. Did it really happen in that fashion . Are they accurate . We seem to be without a lot of effort moving into this area of being some sort of authority of events in which we hold the papers or how marshall was involved, how we do that in a more intentional fashion such s dane, thats another one of our challenges but there certainly seems to be an opportunity for organizations like ours in the public sphere where once, perhaps, this seems trite, where history was once better known, theres an opportunity now for us to fill that vak yucuum a li bit. Were thinking somewhat intentionally about how we might do that, build on what weve done in the past. Great. Anyone else on that point . Yep . H. I would just say, i guess its more aspirational, a reflection of current activity of our center, but it seems to me, to go back to this moment, this no moment of potential of renewed interest in history, but also this moment of tremendous turmoil and upheaval the world over that one of the things i think historians can bring to bear on the current conversation is really a textured sense of the threat to democracy. And here im really always reminded of the litmus test proposed by the late great yale political scientist juan linns who proposed three criteria warning for the erosion of democracy putting recourse to violence or endorsement of violence, curtailing the rights of ones political opponents and denying the legitimacy of the democraticallyelected regime. I think thats a good place to start, and it seems to me both in our own country and the world over that historians have the potential to make nuanced analogies that can be of importance as warning signs to to the potential erosion of democracy really the world over. From this country to the middle east. And that seems to me a function that we, together, might want to take on. Yeah, i couldnt agree with you many more on that. As we move into the last pavilion, liberation pavilion, addresses what it means today, what does world war ii mean today . Were looking at the last 75 years and major legacies of the war. We feel we are at the Inflection Point, the pavilion will bring us to the biggest debate in our country and around the world as national and populist movements around the country. Goes back to fdrs four freedoms which as you all know, the state of the Union Address in january 41 long before pearl harbor, established the freedoms he thought would be the foundation for our war games. He did embed that in the po postworld war order, the nuremberg trials, new International Laws with regard to human right and gave democracy to the countries we justdedpefeat so americas lm ov leadership over the last 75 years. Not always perfect. Nevertheless, its been the consistent framework. And without necessarily just buying into the full thee sisis the good war, we can certainly say the world ended up better off in 45s is as a result of the allied victory than had would have been if the we are right at this Inflection Point right now where National History center and everybody at this table has a way to enter into that debate, engage populations whether through social media or coming to your centers. Yeah, i just wanted to say that im really actually struck by the sort of complimentary strengths we pulled together, lectures, congressional briefings, blog posts, we dont each have to do everything. Right. There are ways to work together, we can focus on our strengths and amplify each others work. We at the Lapage Center, we promote stuff from back story and helped with made by history. Im on the Editorial Board of made by history. We can help each other collaborating on joint programming, which we should, and existing program were each doing that we honed and refined. We would love to continue supporting what the National History center has done because its fantastic. Theres greater opportunity for that, i think. And as david pointed out, that ability to reach both the National Level and then down to the regional and local level, i think all of us who have studied the history of the United States or been, you know, having theodore imposed upon us, just kidding. I understand the power of organizations that can operate at a National Level but have the freedom in a decentralized way to operate at a local and state level and, you know, this is just a tiny, tiny piece of the picture sitting up here, buts, you know, i do think we have a tremendous opportunity to be effective in the world if. We put our minds to it. Dane . In organizing this panel, i really had two agendas in mind. One was to bring all of us together and to sort of communicate with one another about what were doing, and the way in which we sort of intersect and can strengthen one anothers operations, and i think in that context, one of the future projects id like to see the National History Center Launch is, perhaps, a website that links all of our operations and provides a kind of, if not clearinghouse, a way in which we can more effectively understand what everyone is doing and communicate with one another, because i theres so much activity going on right now, and the other agenda, actually, has to do with all of you in the audience because as david said near the beginning, and i thought it was an important and apt point, we need to modify the culture of the academy and the fact that youre here, i think, reflects the fact that you have an interest in doing this. I think that interest has been reflected in the extraordinary outpouring of activity, oppeds, interviews and so on, by historians in response, for example, to the charlottesville crisis and the Confederate Monument issue, the aha, in fact, solicited with its members, solicited, you know, contributions that they had made to this broader conversation and they got hundreds of responses by historians at the local level who were interviewed by their local newspapers, or interviewed, you know, by the local television stations or what have you. That, too, i think, speaks to this hunger among historians at this moment. At this Inflection Point. On the value of a historical spur spective perspective on the kinds of challenges and issues we face today. So thats our other major agenda, as i see it, in this enterprise. David, go ahead. I just want to offer up a historical observation, if i may, which is part confession. Which is that this enhanced sense of the relevance and utility of history that i think our institutions and individual efforts reflect, is directly related to a set of historical circumstances. Yeah. In particular, i mean, one can choose many, but the one im thinking of is the economic collapse of 2008 2009 which fundamentally altered the landscape of the marketplace for historians and really added a sense of urgency to the demand for relevance in what we do. It also made clear to us, those of us who teach both undergraduate and graduate students that the same opportunities that might have been available to a previous generation were not going to be available to that current generation. And that we needed to think of multiple career pathways. And i think the what is going about that moment of crisis is it allowed us to think of new avenues in which we can infuse, in which we could infuse historical knowledge and perspective into domains of life where previously we hadnt thought. So i think that crisis induced an enhanced sense of the relevance of history and in a sense liberated us from thinking that the only worthwhile career outcome was an ro1 research university. So thats how i often think of this moment of relevance part n induced by the crisis of 2008 2009. I think thats an excellent segue to one concluding comment i would make, then well open it up to questions from the audience as well. Im reminded of another Inflection Point in history in the 1970s. Martin luther, the protestant, spirit of capitalism, theres a great line that luther slammed the door of the monastery behind him and walked out into the marketplace with the german language edition of the bible. So historians here some four centuries later, there are always these inflection moments in history as the broad sweep of the major currents of history and historians do have that opportunity, to seems to me, right now, to step into that moment. Find ways to collaborate, join forces in ways we can to have a louder voice and reach more people who are interested in good history and solidly based understandings of how we got to where we are, where we might be going based on the decisions and Public Policies that get articulated. So let me just open up to questions. We still have about 20, 25 minutes i think. For the tv audience, i guess ill just have to repeat the questions. I think we can hear your questions from wherever you might have them. And ill try to repeat them so our Television Audience can hear them as well. Do we have some questions . Yes. To i think jasons point originally, the importance of communicate i communicating, scholarship, and would you speak to how is the training of historians, graduate programs the need for verbal literary skills on parts of those who are going to be historians . I think we all know, we have all seen presentations by highly credentialed and top scholars that were dismal and so much is lost when they cant communicate effectively. So let me just rephrase the question quickly. Question for our Television Audiences. The question of communications and the importance of communications and communicating a scholarship and what are we doing in our universities and graduate programs to train young historians in verbal, rhetorical skills, need ya skimedia skills their history to broader publics . So im thrilled to say that weve already had one successful history communication course taught at the graduate level at the university of massachusetts amher amherst. Amherst, excuse me. Graduate seminar. I think it was eight or ten people. Was highly successful. There are three more history communication courses coming online in 2018 at universities across the country. The syllabi for that course came about as a result of two workshops that were held in 2016. An initial workshop held at Umass Amherst that had about 30 historians, journalists, science communicators, coming together to build a curriculum that would sort of model what the science Communication Programs have done but applied to history. There was then a followup workshop in washington, d. C. , in washington of 2016 that really put the meat on the bones of that and actually spelled out week by week how that course would unfold. And you con find that course at historycommunication. Com. Our website. For the history communication sort of movement. So any and all of you who are in universities and would like to bring that course to your Home University, we would encourage you to visit that website, grab the syllabus. You can also grab the syllabus for the umass course that was taught last year off of their website and adapt it to your Home University and bringing in specialists and scholars that you have in your area. But we would love to see this grow and continue to expand to other universities across the country. As i mentioned, we also now have history communication fellows at the Lapage Center at villanova. I think thats another great avenue for training, giving students onthejob experience, putting together a podcast, working with you on media, presenting things in five or tenminute chunks. I think the movement is growing. Its not there yet, but its starting to percolate. Thats exciting, and i think there are a number of universities around the country that now have masters degrees in public history for people going into the fields of museums and libraries and other Government Agencies and Research Institutes that are curating in collections and so forth. That would be a welcome addition to many of those Masters Programs in public history field. I know university of new orleans has a Masters Program in public history tied together with its military program. Other questions . Or comments . About yes . Yes, the discussion seems to be directed at the university level. I wonder if any of you have progr programs schools, history teachers at secondary schools as well as students. Sometimes i [ inaudible ] its almost too late. Hope not. Theres about 3,000 of them out the there. We just got to execute some reforms and they got too much of the population there to leave it all but there are other things, ill comment on what were doing. Do you all want to add something there . Id just like to say, albert is one of my predecessors at the Marshall Foundation, so great to have your question, albert. As you know, the Marshall Foundation in the past endeavored to reach out to high schools, especially, but it can be a challenge, the rigid curricular demands of High School History teaching, i mean, theres often very little opportunity certainly in public schools. Little more latitude in private schools. But it can be a challenge. Youre absolutely right. Capturing that historical interest, wetting that appetite with good scholarship early on would be what is needed. We found it a bit of a challenge. At tlapage, we create online resources. In the midst of our examination of fake news and false information, we actually developed an online resource called six steps to historical literacy. You can find it on our website and also on our twitter account. And its aimed at High School Students and High School Teachers, in fact, and its a rubric, a matrix, for identifying and distinguishing good history online from bad. Right . So is this article copied from wikipedia . Is this actually written by a historian, you know . Is this making a historical argument . And we created this resource, we put it up online then we got it into the hands of teachers. I had a meeting with the philadelphia public schools. Got it into the resource set for history teachers across the Philadelphia School system. Also got it into the hands of some teachers in other places. They love it. They love it. And, in fact, i got an email from a teacher who told me that they watched some history videos on youtube and then they used that resource that we created as a guide to determine whether they could trust the videos or not. So i think the way that we found to make inroads in that is to create easy resources for teachers that they can bring into the classroom. And when i mean easy to the point that we just made, it has to be super easy because they are overloaded. They got a ton of things on their plate. Theyre understaffed. Underresourced. Six steps to historical literacy. Onepage online resource can be printed off, stuck in a folder, used in the classroom. Thats the way we found success. Yeah, albert, we just discovered inadvertently at b k backstory and Virginia Foundation for the humanities which houses backstory we have a lot of his High School History teachers who are fans and theyd write into us, so we have developed the very kind of lesson plans for some of our shows jason was talking about, simple, straightforward, they kind of came to us and, oh, who knew . All these history teachers are listening and they report back. They use, you know, we did a show on hamilton. I think that was our most successful with High School History teachers, High School Students, and we actually interviewed some of the students and the High School Teacher that taught this, you know, in the high school. Weer be viewed them on backstory. It they, you know, i know a lot of High School Teachers used that particular episode. Eniand ill say at least as as the national World War Ii Museum is concerned, weve done a lot in that area for the last five, six years. We have for both teachers and students in k12, at the teacher level, we have about three or four summer institutes that are nationally competitive, fully subsidized for about 30 teachers every year, and from the social sciences and history from around the country to come and get an immersive oneweek program for our european Normandy Academy has been done by don miller, rich frank, pacific, does the pacific academy, the pacific war. Those teachers get 30 those 30 teachers out of about 300 who apply get immersed, have curriculum materials, making it easy. Millions of dollars have been invested in our Digital Products for our exhibits and film and video, animated maps and oral histories packaged together with the curriculum materials. They go back and the obligation for their free ride, they have to train at least 30 teachers in the use of these materials in their regions and theyre doing even better than that. 30 times 30 every summer, you kind of get the picture. The following summer, we take them either to normandy, depending which cohort they are, an ontheground, bootsontheground, staff, going through battle sites or take them to pearl harbor for a week there. We do the same thing for high school student. An Immersive Program for about 30 students. Leadership. Looking at the values, understanding the history of world war ii. They approach the study of world war ii through literature and they have programs around the country. Were one of the few museums that has it there. We have two of our own institutes, pacific and european. Then our Leadership Program for students. And we expect to reach over a million teachers in the next four, five years. Wow. Thats amazing. It is amazing. Didnt hear anyone comment about National History day. Ive recently been using the john green history crash course videos introducing american hit t history to international student. Its challenging but a remarkable series. Well, were the National History day representatives for the state of louisiana, so weve been involved with them for 10, 12 years, and helped them to design their Normandy Institute which takes some of the 3,000, i guess, students, who compete fin in college park every summer. 30 of them get to go to norma y normandy. Weve been working with a Great Network of 800 schools around the country and its a valuable, valuable networks and we all may be representing and working with them. Jason . We work close we with the National History day in philadelphia, a pretty robust program. Ive been a judge at National History day as well. Its an absolutely fantastic actually a funny story, so i was in lithuania earlier this year delivering a series of lectures and some at the u. S. Embassy had seen on my cv that was a judge at National History. Said, oh, i did National History when i was younger, i loved that program. So its a connection for people around the world. Its a Great Network and it activates students all over the country in h tthe study of hist using original resources and original sources to begin their work. But i think were some more questions . I think we have a little bit more time. Another five minutes or so. Can i make one sure. So i just wanted to add one audience that i think we have all overlooked is the Business Community. We dont hear a lot about historians reaching Business Leaders or doing things for the Business Community, but certainly thats a very Influential Community in the u. S. That has a big influence on policy and on our society in general. So one thing that were piloting at the Lepage Center actually next week is a Business History briefing series. Well be doing history briefings for Business Leaders in center city, philadelphia. Well be piloting this program in hopes that we can make it sort of a quarterly or biannual program that happens in center city then, perhaps, beyond if it takes off. And were actually sort of a little bit following the model dane had set out with the congressional briefings in focusing on sort of an issue that is sort of resonant to that particular community. Were focusing next week on brexit. Thats our first topic for this briefing. And were meeting with the irishamerican Business Chamber network in philadelphia. So i think, you know, we all have so much on our plates and theres a lot of people we want to reach, but i do think the Business Community has been overlooked by historians. Were going to make an attempt to foray into that. I hope this Time Next Year we can report back on how that went. Interestingly enough, the Lepage Center for history in the Public Interest of which im the first director, it was created and founded by a businessman, albert lepage, who was an alumnus of villanova. He did major in history but went on to work in the baking business. He was in the baking business for 30, 40 years. Sold his business to a larger conglomerate where he got his money and started his philanthropy. It was actually in talking with albert that we got this idea. I think there will be actually a tremendous appetite for it. Im excited for it. A similar story helps explain the rise of the Luskin Center at ucla. I suspect theres a businessman behind all of our centers, actually, if we want to go down history major. History major. But who credits history and Historical Perspective with saving his business career. And actually getting him out of a very tricky situation in the middle east and back home to other pursuits. And weve discovered that, in fact, a good number of ucla ph. D. S in history have made their way into the Business World and more particularly into the banking world. So we have a network of banker ph. D. S who report back to us that the Common Thread is the problemsolving quality of history. The act of conceptualizing. Of placing a problem out of context and figuring out what created it then sort of pulling the pieces apart to see how you can repair it. So there, again, this business connection reveals the absolute utility of history. And i would say that all of us in our efforts to survive need to raise funds and find them in our donors. Our museum, we have a 60member board, Business Leaders from all across the country, ceos of Major National corporations. Youd be amazed at how interested they are in history and how they debate history in board meetings. So from our part, were also starting a corporate Leadership Academy to develop Leadership Principles of generals and government leaders of world war ii. And bring these programs for a fee to corporations. Decisionmaking, crisis management. How do you handle a crisis when youre getting thrown off the beaches of dday and youre maybe moments away from a disaster. So theres other ways that History Museums can get into that Business Community with good history and theyre very interested in that approach as well. But i would say all of us have donors of our centers our universities that come from the Business Community and are interested in the substance of what we do, and we should mind them and engage them in our endeavors. As long as they dont tell us how to do research and engage and respect the research that we do which i think has been said several times here is at the core of everything. But i think as we draw this to a close, i think were just about out of time. We have, by my clock, about two more minutes. But let me just say that rob, you want to make i just want to say one more thing, nick, in the spirit of reaching out and reaching through that noise, the Marshall Foundation and the society for military history has for 20odd years sponsored the marshall lecture at aha, so i would draw your attention to the fact that this years marshall lecturer is professor Isabelle Howell from cornell who were bill speaking on the topic of the armistice of 1918, study of defeat and victory, on saturday evening at 5 30 if in the Marriott Ballroom saloon 1. This honors marshalls fascination and love of military history and the fact, too, that general marshall addressed the aha in december of 1939 and talked about the need to study history, military history, in part to avoid future wars, also if youre going to get involved in a war, you got a good sense of how to win that war once you are inevitably engaged in it. So this lecture honors general marshall. Please, if you can, come along and attend and also i know historians love this as a reception post the lecture. Please come and enjoy. Okay. Thank you, rob, for a wonderful plug at the end of the program. I think what you can tell from this very Engaging Panel and the questions from the audience that theres a great deal of unanimity among us, despite the fact that we are coming from different institutions, Different Centers with different missions. There is a desire, and i think expressed today for us to find other ways to collaborate, to cooperate, to partner, to create more space for great history and to break through that noise of the online chatter and the 24hour news cycle and i think with the work that people who are sitting at this table and on this panel and other great History Museums around the country and other centers who are not here that we have a great resource to move into that Inflection Point that you were talking about, david, and i think historians need to maybe not come out of the monasteries but they certainly need to get into the marketplace and i think you can tell from this panel, this invigorating discussion, that historians are out there. Were using the new tools and the new technologies to get to new publics and new audiences. And were finding multiple ways to break into the Public Policy arena with great history. So, thank you, all, for your participation. Thanks to all of our panel for your time and effort and thank you, dane kennedy, for organizing the panel and its been, i think, an interesting experience for all of us and i hope all of you as well, as those also in our Television Audience. So, thank you, and we say good night. Thanks very much. Thank you, all, very much. Er. [ applause ] thursday morning, were live in columbia, South Carolina for the next stop on the cspan bus, 50 capitals tour. South carolina Lieutenant Governor kevin bryant will be our guest on the bus during washington journal starting at 9 30 a. M. Eastern. Next on American History tv, journalist Cokie Roberts moderates a discussion on the First Federal congress at the American Historical Associations annual meeting. The panel talks about the nations founders, including James Madison and George Washington who met from 1789 to 1791 to determine the structure of the new federal government, and decide how it should function. This is an