Imagine a dream team of the nation’s top historians, recruited by the White House to advise the US president on major decisions. That is the idea being pitched by two Harvard University academics who say many US leaders know alarmingly little about history, both of their own country and of others.
Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson are calling on the next US president to create a Council of Historical Advisers that would tackle present problems by looking to the past.
Trying to take down a terrorist group? The council would scour historical records to find similar groups and then analyze which strategies worked against them.
Facing a financial crisis? The council would glean lessons from past meltdowns and report their findings to the president.
“I think there would be more than enough work for a council of applied historians,” said Allison, a professor of government and director of Harvard’s Belfer Center, a university think tank.
In an online manifesto published this month, the professors said they aim to close a “history deficit” in the White House. They contend that few leaders from any presidential administration have shown a deep understanding of history in the Middle East, for example, or of the US’ involvement in the region.
The academics are urging US presidential candidates to promise they would create the council if elected. Campaigns for Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump did not respond to requests for comment. The White House did not immediately comment on the proposal.
US Representative Tom Cole, a Republican and a former history professor, said in an interview that the council would have value only if the president wanted its advice.
Still, Cole said he supports the idea.
“We need leaders to understand the importance of making historically informed decisions. Most of them don’t,” Cole said.
Others question whether academic historians could keep up with the pace of the White House, or if they could all agree.
“The idea that historians would reach consensus on anything is a lovely idea that’s not well borne out in practice,” said Jon Alterman, a senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington and a former US Department of State staff member under former US president George W. Bush.
Alterman, who has a doctorate in history from Harvard, added that “the kind of history that is useful to policymakers is the kind of history fewer and fewer historians are doing.”
The Harvard professors modeled their proposal after the Council of Economic Advisers, a White House agency led by three economists who are appointed to advise the US president.
Allison said that if economists and foreign policy experts are allowed a regular spot at the president’s table, historians deserve a place, too.
“There’s nobody around with a crystal ball, so the question is whether they can add value compared to the competition and I believe they can,” Allison said.
By making the proposal, the academics are also trying to revive the practice of “applied history” — using history as a tool to tackle modern predicaments.
The idea has fallen out of favor at many US colleges, Allison said, but he believes it could draw interest to history departments with lagging enrollment numbers.
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