as both a distinguished scholar and national reader, president wilson felt strongly that the scholar and policy maker were both engaged in a common enterprise. the center takes seriously the views to bridge the gap between the world of ideas and the world of policy, enriching the work of both and enabling each to learn from the other. this series, wilson then and now, is our effort to make wilson and his period more central to that creative contact between ideas and practice in national and global affairs. in a grateful and inclusive way, we seek to highlight work on wilson and his time that offers explicit or implicit lessons for contemporary or enduring problems of public and international life. for this episode we wanted to look beyond academic work in the narrow sense of articles and monographs and look at the work of public scholars wrestling with the challenges of commemorating our past. to commemorate means to remember together. how should we collectively remember a pa