History professionals can offer crucial insights on the great issues of the day. But best beware these stock phrases.
In the fall of 1998, as an assistant history professor recently out of graduate school, I was excited to get a call from a producer of a local CBS morning news show who had noticed a panel discussion I’d organized about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The producer asked me on the show to put the event in historical context. I of course accepted.
It went well, and I kept being asked back on. Even as my academic career progressed, I remained in demand as a historian who could talk in an accessible way on TV and radio about current affairs. I’ve inhabited this strange space now for more than two decades, so I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on how historians contribute to the public square. Here’s what I’ve learned about what historians get wrong—and can get right—when they do so.
The main pitfalls involve clichéd shorthands or tropes—tempting to use when communicating with a lay audience, but distorting and reductive. There are five, in particular, I’ve heard too many times.
Unprecedented: We use the word because it seems a surefire way of getting attention in a media environment that is constantly searching for novelty. Fundamental breaks are more newsworthy than more of the same. For the historian, it’s also a way of stepping into the shoes of contemporary observers who feel as if something could never have happened before.
The problem is that ...
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