University, and i will provide over this panel, talking about the 17 nineties. Then and, now thinking about allegedly put between that fragile moment between the 17 nineties and how we might think about what we can learn about that moment and how it connects or does not connect to what is happening in american political history at this moment. So i will introduce the four panelists, each person will talk for five to seven minutes and develop a few lines of inquiry. I will ask a few people based on what people said and folks will have a chance to have a conversation here, but we want to leave the last 45 to 30 minutes for questions for the audience. So, as we are going have in mind thinks that you want to say or things you want to ask about. I want to introduce folks from my left to right. So, first is katlyn carter. Katlyn its a visiting University Professor at the university of notre dame, her ph. D. Is from president. She spent two years as a post doctoral fellowship as a wiser center for emerging democracies at the university of michigan. Shes working on a book called houses of glass, secrecy, transparency in the birth of Representative Democracy. Ive had the pleasure of raising the manuscript, its a book about the french revolution in the 17 nineties and the american constitutional moment in the 17 eighties and nineties, so it is a transatlantic history that is attentive both the french context and the american context. And its going to be great so look forward when it comes out. Katlyn, like several other folks has written for public outlet as well. Shes had a few peaches in the Washington Post and other places as well. She has been out there, and getting the public with her historical work. Next to katlyn is mark boonshoft. Mark brought us ph. D. From the ohio state university, and he is currently and its december festive history in Political Science in vermont. He spent two years at as a pull dock and the new york public library. Marks book, in the works, is called the rise and fall of aristocratic education, and the making of the american republic. Next to mark is lindsay chervinsky. Lindsay got her ph. D. In history from the university of california at davis. She is currently the white house historian, working for the White House Historical association. And she also held a post dock for two years and her son was at Southern Methodist university at the center for president ial history her book that she is working on and is under contract with Harvard University precedent titled the president kept, and George Washington and the creation of an american institution. Lindsay has written several pieces for a popular audience, thinking through the cabinet choices that our current president has made and what we might learn from history in thinking that through. And then, last but not least at the end is david houpt. David got his ph. D. From the City University of new york graduate center, and he is currently an assistant professor at the university of North Carolina at wilmington. And his book, also under contract, is to organize the sovereign people, democracy and political mobilization and revolutionary pennsylvania. So, thank you to all four of you, and we will start with katlyn and work our way down. Great can everyone hear me . Okay. Thank you to the conference organizers for putting together this really exciting schedule, and to mark for organizing our panel today. And all, the seth, lindsey, david for being here, and all of you for coming out early this morning. So i am just going to give some brief remarks to introduce my research, before we jump into questions. My research has been informed by the time i spent a working in washington, actually, before i went back to graduate school. That generated a lot of questions about how Representative Government worked, and what made it legitimate. So what does that mean for government to speak for the people . To what degree should elected officials be bound to public opinion, and how should that relationship actually be facilitated in practice . I decided that, to begin to answer these questions, i wanted to go back and needed to go back to the founding of Representative Democracy in the 18 century. So what i realized is how these questions were essential to the founding and how they were left then and remain today, largely unanswered. Much of the political history of the United States, i think, comes down to a repeated rehashing and a resettlement of these fundamental questions. So, in short, the instability of the very meaning of Representative Democracy generated and it continues to generate deep disagreements in american political life. So the 17 nineties, i think, is critical to identifying the way that Americans First grappled with these questions and paradoxes of Representative Democracy. And what we are witnessing today is that the breakdown of a delicately constructed legitimacy of Representative Government as a democratic form. The 17 nineties is particularly useful to examined because it was the period and which that legitimacy was first cemented and also first contested. Right . So to get at this process, my research is focused on debates on the use of secrecy in the government, and i use that as a lens to try to understand how early americans thought about Representative Democracy. And, in fact, i think the issue of secrecy in politics can be used similarly today to identify the same underlying tensions over the meaning and function of Representative Government. So, today, the masthead of the Washington Post claims that democracy dies and darkness. This conviction that darkness is dangerous to democracy can be traced back to the origin of model Representative Government. And the wake of the Constitutional Convention the decision to work in secret, part of a delivered effort to make representative institutions less susceptible to pressure became a source of controversy in the early american republic. Critics of the constitution and George Washington wants a protracted attack on the propriety of using secrets and secrecy in a government by and for the people. And this critique really grew through out of the 17 nineties as popular societies identify the use of secrecy as a trick being used to undermine the will of the people. So, with my research, i argue that attitudes about secrecy retired to evolving is some chance about what it meant to represent the people in government. So those who have vision Political Representation as a process American Public opinion had a low tolerance for secrecy in the government. While others who under stood representation as the advocacy of the peoples best interest, even when it was at variance with public opinion, saw a greater utility for secrecy. So, at a root, my work demonstrates that, although it came to be widely seen as a dangerous and the 17 nineties especially. Secrecy was essential to the establishment of a stable Representative Democracy in the United States. Its a paradox that we have yet to reckon with, actually. So by using decisions and debates about secrecy and transparency in government as you learn to understand the invention of the evolution of Representative Democracy, my Research Also explains how transparency became a cornerstone of modern democracies and the way in which state secrecy was aimed particularly dangerous. These are connotations we love with today, and they are the direct result of a transformation and thinking that took place in the latter half of the 18th century. The question of what can legitimately be kept secret in government remains at the heart of contests over the meaning and practice of representative politics to this day. And, as the debates intensify, political scientists tie the question back to the meaning of democracy itself. So, as a historian, i am not aiming to produce policy prescription or settle the question of whether secrecy promotes or diminishes democracy. Instead, i want to explain how, why, and with what effect the question of state secrecy was linked to the meaning of Representative Democracy in the first place. So attitudes about state secrecy and transparency, like understanding the Representative Democracy are not a historical. I tell that to a room full of historian, so i am sure you agree with me. They have been shaped indifferent context, right, over time. In the modern world, we live within the discursive an institutional framework created in the 18 century, which should lead us to investigate their construction. Understanding the way debates over transparency and secrecy played out in the foundation of modern Representative Democracy is essential to clarify the state of those debates today. And i think i will leave it at that for now. Can you hear me . Okay. Let me first echo katlyns thanks to the coal panelists, that and im excited to be at a conference that is not just historians. Ill start with and anecdote from the 1780, so albert protocol on a panel on the 1790s. And as he appeared in a boston magazine in 1784 that and then it to show the destructive consequences and tendency and establishing private academies in this government. Private academies isnt all caps. These were privately run state charters schools, often founded by, you know, pretty prominent individuals, usually to serve their own children. To give you an idea, the first vote in massachusetts was phillips andover. If there was no such thing as, again, a private academy, wealthy parents would have to work in their town to establish a good school in which the youth would all have it in their power to receive an advanced education, this would be desirable because everyone has to act their part, essentially. So the essay finishes with a prediction. If things are not changing, massachusetts kept founding these privately run, publicly chartered secondary schools but ignored Common Schools for all children, the government will, quote, be subverted from a republic to an aristocracy, where they will be no difficult matter for that part of the community who has, as it were, monopolize all the knowledge to acquire the range of government and convey them to others who make the same move. So, i start with the 17 eighties essay, because it start the debate that plays out and the 1790s and what my work on the 1790s focus is on is that a partisan debate over education policy that the rise of academies, these privately run secondary schools bring out. So, in that debate, all of the participants take for granted what this essay did, that education was an arbiter of access to political power, and that, in other words, what i find that these partisan fights over education policy in the 1790s are a letter larger fight over how to govern the republican, who should govern the republic. That was left somewhat unsettled by the u. S. Constitution. So you would think that most americans agreed with the boston magazine essay, that the idea that equal education for and equal citizenry was absolutely necessary. And a Pulitzer Prize running book on national education, no team was so universally articulated as the need for self governing people for universal education. What i have noticed in the 17 nineties is that the Political Forces are rate against that for some time. So around 175 academies were founded between 1780 and 1800, these were one of the most ubiquitous institutions of the period, and they received more charters of incorporation from state legislatures than any type of institution besides the transportation projects, and churches. They received more government funding, direct, and direct than any other school, and this all happened in the face of arguments like this to boston magazine essay that held, since the chartered academies were created and serve the interests of an elite, it would necessarily produced a country governed by. One in the face of that, these things still open. The debate crystallized in three positions that i think are interesting about education, and that carry through in interesting ways through much of American History. So the economy keeps getting built because federalists belief in the need for an old school, european style ruling class. This one new york federalist wrote that the constitution would not work unless he was administered by a man by a man who academies educated men of property. The critique that academy serve and ruling elite, or in a rustic credit did not fit republican ideas and because they were privately run they could not be changed enough democratically, and led to a number of different positions for reform. On the one hand, there were those that agreed that government and country should be governed by exceptional men but academy says the federalists created did not really find those people, they just were credential people who had claims to status and influence. So, what you need to do was brought in the equality of opportunity, create a public system that deliberately allowed meritorious people to run. So you see these in pyramid shaped plans for Public Education that proliferate in the period that would have, at the base, a universal white man comments cool up through a public state university, or even a National University was floated pretty frequently. The man who ascended that letter were seen as the rightful rulers, that sounds like our modern meritocracy, as mythical as it may be. Those thought that all white men should receive the same education, funded and administered by government and sufficiently to prepare any citizen for public office. That, in other words, representatives should be made representative should be representative, and this was the way to make sure you could have competent ones. In the end, i think this debate reminds us that decisions about who to educate and how are fundamentally political questions about how we are governed and by whom. So i will leave it at that. Thank you for being here. I think if i look at the program correctly, this is the only strictly 18th century panel, so i appreciate the vote of support by showing up and engaging in conversation with us. So as seth said, my work is on the president s cabinet and the origins of the cabinet. As many may know, if you look at the constitution, the word cabinet does not exist. And no legislation was ever passed to create it and yet it was an institution that we are all wildly familiar with and what sort of practices led to its creation, how it evolved and developed, and what sort of role it had in the early republic. I ended up arguing that there were three real origins of the president s cabinet. In particular, washingtons military experience from the revolutionary war, hes drew several parallels from the councils of war through the cabinet, so once he determined that a cabinet was necessary to provide the advice and support that he required in the face of the constitutional, domestic and international crises, he really drew on the practices that has served him well as commander in chief of the continental army. Second, all of the states had councils of state, or they had governors councils, or they had executive councils, and most of the first cabinet members had experience in those councils one way or another. Either they had been a governor, or they had been a member of one of those councils and by and large they thought they were correct. And they really felt that they limited executive authority, they were a tool that the legislators used to control the governor or to control the executive, and that was a system that they were looking to not replicate and the new federal government. Finally, the british cabinet, the word cabinet comes from the british government. Most americans were not very familiar with it. They blamed the british ministers for instigating the conflict behind the revolutionary war and while none of the first cabinet members ever wrote this down, i believe strongly that it was always something on their minds. They knew there was a possibility they might be compared to eight. Of course, they did not write it down, so i cannot say that defendant really, but i believe in it strongly. All these origins shaped much more than just washingtons perspective on the cabinet. They shaped policy, culture, and society in the early republic. The United States was part of an International Community and their interactions with that community reflected in the way that they approached the new nation. I think that the cabinet is a perfect case study to understand the early republic and the government more broadly. It was created in response to challenges and crises that came up that were not expected. International forces often forced the cabinet to meet and to respond. This is something that the entire early republic grappled with and it was created to meet the needs of the people governing and an organic way when the constitution does not provide that many details about what the day today governing experience should actually look like. So the organic Reactive Development is a key to the cabinet, and a key to the early republic. So, all of that being said, i get asked the question, why do you study these that, old white guys . Dont we know everything about them . What is possibly left to right . Its been hundreds of years. Yet, the last book that was born on the cabinet was published in 1912. And it was about t