Welcome in really need to be welcomed in a very personal confident way. To cut through some of that alienation and loneliness. , i conceived of a Mentorship Program where we pair incoming new members, graduate students, with a senior scholar of their choice, who has volunteered to do this. To get together for at least an hour for a cup of coffee, which the oah pays for. And to talk about the Young Persons career and their interests and the direction they wish to take. This morning, and met with two mentees and we talked about their work. We also talked about the job market and ways in which the oah can help those who are entering the job market for the first time. I think there are a number of ways. Available tohops teach people how to write a new cover letter, how to put together a job resume, how to interview on skype. What is the meaning of an oncampus interview and how do you handle loads . Those. We are trying to reach out to a new generation of historians who are entering our profession or community. I think the Mentorship Program is one of the ways that i want to help in that endeavor, bringing new folks and. And aoutgoing president professor at american university, alan kraut, thank you for being with us. Thank you. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan and the senate on cspan 2, here, we complement that coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and Public Affairs event. On weekends, we are home to American History tv, with programs that tell our nation ilories, including the civ anniversary. Touring historic sites. Bookshelf, looking at the policies and legacies of our commanders in chief. History, and america, featuring archival footage. Cspan 3, rated by the cable tv industry. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. Patty limerick is a professor of history at Colorado University of boulder and the incoming president of the organization of american historians. What is your job here . My job as president helps me childhood. Th my my two big sisters were cheerleaders and i was not. I think that my job is to relieving. Cheerleading. There will be no pompoms or the usual accoutrements. The value of history in understanding our world and the alternatives that we might have passed up before but we can still reactivate or just do not do that again anyway, all kinds of excellent lessons to be drawn from history. Also, historians are very cool people. We have some of the best stories around. Many of them are valuable stories and extremely entertaining and fun. Why does this interest you so much . Because i have no other skills. I place my strengths. Strengths. O my i do very much enjoy stories. I enjoy thinking about stories. Me to think of an important fact that was not attached to a story, you would have wasted your time. It is really the story that brings my mind into action. I could not have been a philosopher. I could not have been a political scientist, because a model would have made me think where are the individual people . So, history turns out to be the Perfect Match for what minor runs like to do, which is find out what we think about people and how they present themselves on the planet. You write about this for the denver post and usa today. Share some interesting stories of how you try to convey your passion for history to those who read your columns. The denver post sent me up to do a regular column. I have written episodically for them. I did write some reflections on the last president ial campaign and the debate. A couple of those columns appeared. They asked me to appear regularly. Into controversy. I wrote in january, a column comparing some of the issues of pioneer relationships with indian people and westward expansion comparing that to israeli encounters with Palestinian People and their expansion. There is some matches there, there are some big differences there. There were responses that indicated that a whole wide range of people disagree about everything and agreed on one thing. That was that i needed to be told to watch my step and stay out of territory that was over my head. That was good. I write unity to a Diverse Group of people. I find those moments of educational. Error not toy emphasize that when i say that something in history deserves comparison,nd i do not mean that they are equivalent. I never intended to say that there was a direct comparison. Im not spelling out exclusively that i have done this, i brought the verbal activities onto myself. Each time that i do Something Like that, i work hard on it and then say i have learned another lesson to apply the next time. Apparently this learning lessons will go on into eternity. Have toople of my age do crossword puzzles to keep their minds likely and nimble. Tougher have to do proposals because theres always a much information coming at me. Used to have to say i think yes, but now i give that up. What will the next proposition b . E . I do not need crossword puzzles. Youou teach in boulder, study americas west. The center of the American West is turning hindsight into foresight. Case out there making the for Historical Perspective and how Historical Perspective can help with the current dilemma. For instance, if we are lost in blaming each other over a particular issue, it can be very useful to think that that conflict came out of a past in some ways, the people who got us into this died 100 years ago. So, why are we fighting each other . Why dont we try to reconcile our legacy and resolve what we can resolve . On the controversies over natural gas and hydraulic pressure. We do that by recognizing that the American West has a long history with distractive industries and a lot of history of humans in proximity to those industries. Whether we get agitated about hydraulic fracturing near suburbs we have historical experience to draw on and think, what happens when you put residential settlement so close to Industrial Products . People moved to those sites because they wanted jobs, mining, logging. Now we have quite an interesting reversal of that. Folks are living there and then they discover that an oil or gas well is going in and they are informed that that will happen. There is also an important way of saying, now we are facing something new. Thatve sub groups in town came into existence because the residents were using fuel to get to and from work and heat their home. Burbs, which have these consumption of fossil fuels, there turning into sites of reduction of fossil fuel. The moment is so important in the history of reduction and consumption. They finally get pulled together and people have to think about where they are in their use of resources. Great stories in American History is western expansion. What is your area of expertise . Something happened when i was in graduate goal. Youth or they forgot to tell me to pick an area of specialization or i was told and did not do it. My field is western American History. When i went for job interviews, people would say, what historical era . Jacksonian, 1830s, Franklin Roosevelt i said, i do not know how you separate them. It is so important for the moltke the grid and never picked a time period. They would say its a political, cultural, social history . I would say these are all really interesting and really important. Whenow or other, i missed we were branded with an area of specialization. It is pretty strenuous, but i actually have very few limits. I am a western american historian, that is true. Every now and then, i work with the middle eastern and african historians. We look at ways in which those processes in the late 1930s are similar. Nigeria has an uncanny similarity to montana and arizona with indian people. So, i cannot answer your question of what is my area of specialization, because i have had a very lucky life and my curiosity is still in the open range. How do you view the role of this organization as you take over as the president . What is its mission and what is your ultimate goal . The mission is to be a convenient place for all of us to bring our areas of specialization. Parts of theour mosaic together, where we can meet and chat. You sit down with someone at a session and end up chatting. Afterwards about the unexpected overlap with strangers. You cannot be a stranger after you find that you have a shared interest. So, there is that convening. I believe that more and more we need to demonstrate that there are many excellent ways to see a historian and do history. And Academic Research and writing has been a crucial part of it, but it is not the only part. Im getting more engaged with the public, that is the great trend i think. Valuedting that properly in the History Department when they are hiring and promoting. And, most important, when they are educating graduate students and there is not just one set of skills that this profession requires. Usingis some aspect of evidence clearly and making claims. What you do with it is very open. Finally, as you get these students as freshman or sophomores, how are we doing as a country in preparing these greats High School Students to understand our history . The circumstances of how freshmen arrive on campuses and what is in their mind and what skills they have, that is not easy. College professors have every obligation to work closely and take every opportunity to be in the company because it is wrong for us. Here is a student who does not know the basic pretzels of the role of the presidency. We have to be in a conversation. Not more than a conversation, but we have to be paying attention to each other. No things about the getting the best behavior out of students. There is much for us to exchange. Not enthusiastic about how some faculty members can be tempted into saying, what is k12 education. It is all right to ask, but then to be full participants and try to get that working. If i think about the schedule of a teacher who has seven hours in the classroom and scattered concentration from the digital when, and papers to grade they get home, and lesson plans to put together, i am really empathetic. If i sounded in any way like i thought i was in a position to condemn their performance, i would hope i would be correct at that. It is a societal thing. I have no plans of who i will support in the next residential election. Hillary clinton said it takes a village to raise a child and it does take a cooperative society to get children in good shape for understanding their world and having a good grasp on history. Right now, it is not what i would like it to be. What a privilege and opportunity to be part of the enterprise of helping young people know the world they came into. As soon as you get through to students as dynamic in any field of inquiry, it is not, now we should memorize some dates. Now, we will confront the fact we have a limited amount of time on the planet as a human being. We have the great privilege of having records of those who came before us. People will come after us and want to know about us and how we responded to challenges. Incredibleget that human drama history offers us, and in orientation on earth of who are we and where are we going, there was a little boy taken by his father to see the supreme court. He came in and sat quietly and appropriately respectful. A flight came in and flew around and landed on his head. The little boy was very excited and he said, look, one of them is alive. They were always alive, but the sense that the people of the past were somehow just not alive the way we are today, it is so important to get the sense that every moment and in time at peoples in the past, did not know the future. Is a consciousness that deepens every moment of our own life, having that sense of kinship with people of the past. Patty is a professor in colorado. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for the opportunity. Direction of congress, the voices and experiences in the mid20th century are being documented in an oral history project. The effort is a collaboration of the Smithsonian National museum of african American History and the Southern Oral History Program at the university of North Carolina chapel hill. From the collection and. Nterview with Junius Williams born in the segregated south but educated in the north, he joined a student nonviolent cord knitting committee in the early 1960s to fight for equal rights. He recalls his work in the civil rights conference he worked he organized and a congress they and a conversation with malcolm x. This is part one. It is 90 much 90 minutes. The director of the since of of smithsonian Museum AfricanAmerican History and culture. Who is Junius Williams . A fascinating individual because his wife straddles oath the south and the north. He is someone who grew up middleclass in richmond, virginia. He went to college in massachusetts and got involved very early in the civil rights new movement. He was with a group of people, a group of kids who were going in montgomery in 1963 and 1964. What is fascinating is he to they is introduced student nonv