So I've gone back and read this a couple more times, and my original reaction stands. The whole "humanists are disengaged" jeremiad is just myopic. In our current moment, humanities folks are more publicly engaged than I've seen before. /1 chronicle.com/article/The-Ac…
Lepore undervalues teaching, esp in non-elite and k12 settings, which is massive public engagement on an everyday basis. @NickSacco55 and others have pointed out just how much she doesn't seem to understand public history, much less what its many practitioners do. /2
Her argument seems very myopic to me. It's a set of broad-brush generalizations about what "the academy" is doing that don't seem to take into account anything beyond the Charles River. /3
And that, in turn, plays into the stereotypes of those most hostile to higher ed in general and the humanities in particular bc it's an out of touch argument counted in elitism and a lack of self awareness. It's also out of date. We're more than books and journals today. /4
Meanwhile, in my roles as historian and teacher at a decidedly non-elite, urban, open-access institution, I engage the public in a myriad of forms every day. My students, our community stakeholders, and various groups in both Iowa and beyond. That's a regular part of my work. /5
In the last 6 weeks I've done talks at a local conference celebrating an Iowa desegregation case, the Iowa/Nebraska NAACP summit on racial disparities, and four different college/university campuses. I've written a piece for the WaPo, I've done about half a dozen interviews. /6
Over the last couple years, I've published several media pieces, done a dozen campus visits, appeared on several news programs to talk about race and incarceration, and appeared in a successful documentary that carried that conversation straight into the public sphere. /7
I have done more interviews than I can count with students working on research projects across the US, Canada, and even some in Australia--and that has been some of my absolute favorite work to do. I coordinate our local History Day competition, and have for 4 years now. /8
But here's the key: I'm no different than hundreds of other historians and humanists at institutions like mine, or in museums and libraries, or in K-12 public schools, who are publicly engaged almost by definition. My list is one example of what that engagement can look like. /9
What I'm not interested in is a narrative of declension from someone who's not on social media or aware of how our field differently engages the public. What I *am* interested in is all of the work that everyone on here has shared in response to the article. It's inspiring. /10
Anyway, I had a lot of reactions to that interview. Frustration, disbelief, sadness. The "famous scholar thinks y'all are doing it wrong" genre is played out. The public-facing scholarly work happening now is vast, diverse, and dynamic. Let's talk about that instead, please. /fin
