400 A Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 www.nationalhistorycenter.org National History Center An initiative of the American Historical Association Volume III Issue 1 Spring 2008 We recognize and thank our newest Founders and Lecture Series with Council on Foreign Contributors who have supported the Center since the last Relations Begins newsletter in Spring 2007. Renewing Founders Douglas & Margo Arnold Bernard Bailyn James M. Banner, Jr. Jerry Bentley Roger Brown Giles Constable Hunter Dupree Marshall C. Eakin Stanley N. Katz Wm. Roger Louis William H. & Elizabeth McNeill Joseph C. Miller J. Alden Nicholas Maureen Murphy Nutting Donald A. Ritchie James J. Sheehan Fritz Stern R. Vladimir Steffel Founders, August 2007–April 2008 James B. & Laura Crooks Roger Louis (left) with Ernest May at the lecture with the CFR Felipe Fernández-Armesto Alice George The lecture series cosponsored by the National History Center and the Council John Gillis Edward Gosslein on Foreign Relations began with two talks, one featuring Professor Ernest May, Samuel A. Syme, Jr. the Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard University, and the second with Professor Fritz Stern, University Professor Emeritus of Columbia Contributors, August 2007–April 2008 University. Michael Bailey Ralph Buultjens The inaugural lecture with Ernest May was held at the Council’s New York Nancy W. Collins headquarters on October 24, 2007. Richard Haas, President of the Council, Robert & Geri Dalleck welcomed the members of the Council on Foreign Relations to the event and Donald & Jean Lamm Wm. Roger Louis, founding director of the the National History Center, James C. Turner introduced Ernest May. Professor May reconsidered surprise attacks, focusing on the Fall of France in 1940 compared to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001. May briefly described the German, French, Print ISSN: 1935-5556 and British military and political plans in the spring of 1940 and the lack of Online ISSN:1935-8547 intelligence and communication between agencies that contributed to the fall of France. After his talk, May responded to many questions from audience © National History Center members. (cont. on page 3) Production and Photography by Miriam E. Hauss National History Center / 1 400 A Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 www.nationalhistorycenter.org Mason University and the Stanford University History AHA Vice Presidents Join the Education Group in partnership with the American Center’s Board of Trustees Historical Association and the National History Center, the Clearinghouse is funded by a $7 million, five-year grant from The National History Center’s Board of Trustees the U.S. Department of Education. Intended to be the welcomes the three Vice Presidents of the American principal on-line resource for all aspects of K–12 history Historical Association as the newest members to the education (http://teachinghistory.org), the Clearinghouse Board: Karen Halttunen (University of Southern provides information about history content of importance to California), Vice President of the Teaching Division; teachers, effective and appropriate teaching materials, best Teofilo Ruiz (University of California, Los Angeles), Vice history teaching practices, history education policy and President of the Research Division; and David J. Weber research findings, professional development for history (Southern Methodist University), Vice President of the teachers, and Teaching American History projects. The site Professional Division. They join Wm. Roger Louis also contains many interactive features and can link historians (University of Texas, Austin), Chairman; James J. Sheehan and teachers to relevant sites, literature, and programs (Stanford University), Vice Chair; James M. Banner, Jr. worldwide. (Washington, D.C.), Treasurer; Maureen Murphy Nutting (North Seattle Community College); Secretary; Susan Ferber (Oxford University Press); James R. Grossman (Newberry Library); Robert L. Harris (Cornell University); Stanley N. Katz (Princeton University); Deanna Marcum (Library of Congress); Diane Ravitch (New York University); and Marilyn B. Young (New York University). The Center Partners with the The Center commissions policy papers on particular topics, National History Education Clearinghouse which will change each year. For this first year, the Center has commissioned papers on history assessment regimes in six The National History Center has become a partner in the states—Bradley Fogo for California, Frederick Drake for work of the National History Education Clearinghouse. Illinois, Michael Bruner for Kansas, Steven Cohen for Created by the Center for History and New Media at George Massachusetts, Henry Kiernan for New York, and Stephanie van Hover for Virginia. After the papers’ submission in the summer of 2008, their authors will gather in Washington, New design for the Center’s web site D.C. to discuss their findings and prepare a general policy The National History Center recently had its web site statement about history assessments. The statement will redesigned by the Center for History and New Media include the general conclusions the authors have drawn from at George Mason. Visit www.nationalhistorycenter.org their respective studies and will propose steps to improve to see the changes. The site now has a more dynamic history assessments generally. At the conclusion of the presence on the web and includes a search engine. assessment project, the papers and policy statement will Visit to keep up with the latest activities of the appear on the Clearinghouse and Center websites and will be Center. The site distributed by the Center to all interested parties. A similar includes links to approach will be taken in subsequent years to other topics. the recent news as well as Involvement in the Clearinghouse’s work is allied to the podcasts of Center’s previous work on history education policy. Both recent lectures. endeavors represent the Center’s larger and on-going effort You can also to identify means by which historians can be more subscribe to a effectively engaged in the creation and reform of history RSS feed that education policy at the national, state, and local levels. will keep you informed! National History Center / 2 400 A Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 www.nationalhistorycenter.org well the old-fashioned disciplinary major is contributing to the sorts of skills that are commonly thought to characterize liberal education—critical thinking, oral and written expression, a sense of values, civic engagement, and more. The task of the working group set up by the Center is to evaluate the effectiveness of the history major as a component of undergraduate liberal education. Stan Katz co-chairs the working group with Jim Grossman of the Newberry Library, and the group has additional colleagues drawn from a wide variety of different sorts of history departments, including Rayman Solomon, dean of the Rutgers–Camden School of Law, and Nick Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, both historians who run the sorts of graduate professional programs that attract many history BA graduates. The group first met in Fritz Stern pondering a question from the CFR audience March 2007 to design the project, which began by surveying a stratified sample of very different sorts of CFR Lecture series (cont. from page 1) college and university history departments, in order to have On March 4, 2008, Fritz Stern spoke in front of a packed some notion (going beyond the personal experiences of house at the Council. Professor Stern’s lecture was entitled the working group) as to what is being done “out there.” A “Fear and Hitler’s Instant Subversion of Freedom.” He preliminary report was presented at the AHA’s annual discussed how Germany was transformed into a one-party meeting in January 2008. A second meeting of the Center’s dictatorship and how quickly it happened in 1933. Craig R. group last month in New York at the OAH meeting Whitney, the standards editor of The New York Times focused on possible recommendations to the Teagle facilitated questions from the audience. Both lectures were Foundation. filmed by the Council on Foreign Relations and are available on their web site, www.cfr.org. Links to the The next step is to revise the report and formulate the videocasts are available on the Center’s web site. recommendations in order to submit it to Teagle just after Labor Day. It is hoped that the report will be able to say something both informative and helpful about the role of the history major as the working group believes that History and Liberal Education History plays a uniquely valuable role in liberal education. Stay tuned for the report this fall! The Teagle Foundation project is making good progress. The Center applied to the Teagle Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to the promotion of undergraduate liberal education, in response to a request for proposals for inquiries into the role of various disciplines in liberal education. The historic rhetoric has been that undergraduate liberal education proceeds sequentially, from general education to disciplinary education—from broad synthetic and comparative approaches to the totality of knowledge for underclassmen, to highly specialized work in disciplinary departments for upperclassmen. Not much has changed over the years in the broader context of this approach, though there have been numerous attempts to Members of the Center’s working group with W. Robert Connor, redefine general education, most recently in terms