Nichelle Frank
NCPH 2019 Case Statement
When I joined this working group for its first assemblage at the 2018 NCPH conference in Las Vegas, I joined in the capacity of a current graduate student in history with interest in public history. I continue to fulfill that role as well as serving in two of the group’s recently-developed subgroups. The three subgroups on organizing, economic models, and professional resources interrelate, but individual groups are researching solutions for challenges we identified at the 2018 meeting.
Our working group contributes to a conversation about how to connect public historians more closely with one another and with resources, particularly in instances where they require assistance on what to do if the demands of their employer contradict or constrain their ethical responsibility as historians. This conversation is not entirely new to the NCPH. In fact, the NCPH Code of Ethics adopted in 2007 outlines a public historian’s ethical responsibility in the roles of employee, colleague, and individual. Yet, upholding this code can become difficult when the goals of one or more of the roles conflicts with the others.
In the “Organizing” subgroup, we are looking for ways to connect public historians. When not employed in larger public history organizations or workplaces with built-in public history communities, some public historians find themselves forging their own way. Many of these individuals function as the sole public historian or as private contractors. They might not have a direct connection to a community that will provide them with ready answers if they find themselves in ethical hot water. Our subgroup, then, decided to identify organizations that have formed to address similar labor concerns and research these organizations in order to find possible models for something like a public history guild. One such group is the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA). Established in 1998, LAWCHA created a point of connection for historians, labor educators, and working-class activists. The association holds an annual meeting, which links to the Organization of American Historians (OAH) during alternating years and co-sponsors meetings with different organizations during the years it is not linked to OAH. The original goal was to shed greater light on the field of labor history. To that end, LAWCHA’s annual meetings have more consistently and more directly connected those individuals interested in labor history. LAWCHA also hosts a website with numerous resources, particularly sources about teaching labor history as well as the unionization of educators. Perhaps, then, public historians as practitioners could look to LAWCHA for some ideas on initiating organization. The NCPH already serves many of the purposes that LAWCHA serves for labor historians (e.g. annual meetings, website), so it seems that public historians would benefit from the part of LAWCHA that acts as linking of historians as workers, not just as an intellectual community. In that vein, perhaps a group within the NCPH or an independent guild needs to form in order to more directly engage with public historians as practitioners, as laborers who have an ethical responsibility that might not always align with their employers.
The “Professional Resources” subgroup extends the idea of organizing public historians. After our conversation in 2018, it was clear that many public historians find themselves in ethical quandaries with no one to turn to. To remedy such situations, this subgroup aims to identify resources on ethics for public historians. The NCPH Code of Ethics certainly defines the ethical responsibilities of public historians, but what if a public historian finds that their self-responsibility does not align with their responsibility to their employer or colleague? What if their job is on the line? The idealist might say that the public historian should be ethically responsible to the history itself. The Code of Ethics reminds public historians that “personal issues of social conscience” are distinct from “issues of ethical practice.” But where’s the line of distinction? In some situations, that line would be quite fuzzy. To help public historians find ideas on how to handle such ethical quandaries, our subgroup identified three areas of professional resources: within the NCPH (past and current), within the humanities professions, and among the broader range of workers in non-humanities and even non-academic professions. We are researching the resources available within each area and will be compiling our information in the coming months leading up to the 2019 meeting. As I tackle researching the “within the humanities professions” area, I’m asking a number of questions: Are other humanities professionals addressing similar issues? If so, what have they been doing? How might public historians foster connections with them? By looking to what archeologists, folklorists, artists, art historians, philosophers, and other humanists doing, this subgroup will gain insight into building connections within our own community and beyond so that public historians know where to go for information and support on ethical issues.
In looking ahead, there is still much work to be done on the issue of ethics in public history. But in working on these initial steps, I anticipate our working group will have excellent fodder for the 2019 meeting and beyond.