On November 6, 2013, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH), in
collaboration with the National Park Service Northeast Region, convened a public forum at the
Rutgers-Camden campus to consider the implications of “Imperiled Promise: The State of
History in the National Parks,” a 2011 report addressing the presentation of history in U.S.
national parks. The following is a revised version of concluding remarks delivered by Temple
University professor Seth Bruggeman.
A New Future for History in the National Park Service
By Seth C. Bruggeman
The authors of Imperiled Promise, a 2011 report assessing the practice of history in the
National Park Service (NPS), leave little doubt about their findings: “The state of history practice
today [is] an uneven landscape of inspiration and success amid policies and practices that
sometimes inhibit high-quality work.” Put even more bluntly by an anonymous insider quoted in
the report, the agency’s history program is “sporadic, interrupted, superbly excellent in some
instances and vacant in others.”1 These are hard words for a federal agency that has, since the
1930s, been the government’s foremost purveyor of history. And yet, despite important
accomplishments in recent years, we learn from Imperiled Promise how systematic defunding, a
preoccupation with compliance mandates, and the wrongheaded bifurcation of cultural resource
management and interpretation have rendered history making in the NPS all but impotent.
The good news is that Imperiled Promise’s message has not fallen on deaf ears within the
NPS. Owing in large part to a willingness within the agency’s history program to tackle tough
issues and to the determination of the report’s authors that their work not be ignored, Imperiled
Promise has enjoyed a broad readership. Numerous conference sessions, working groups,
podcasts, and regional forums have brought NPS staff together with fellow travelers in a
wide-reaching conversation about how to implement the report’s many recommendations. It’s no
small task. The report presents twelve findings, each accompanied by calls for change.
Recommendations range from the practical, such as hiring more historians, to the lofty, like
using civic engagement “to embrace possibilities for larger societal change” (Imperiled Promise,
114).
MARCH’s November forum, “Scholarship and Partnerships: The State of History in the
National Parks,” brought together nearly eighty NPS staff, university historians, graduate
students, and other friends of the agency to discuss possibilities opened up by Imperiled Promise,
focusing in part on the example of NPS’s Valley Forge National Historical Park. Organized to
mirror the report’s advice that the NPS engage audiences in new ways, the forum featured a
series of speakers followed by smaller workgroup discussions wherein designated participants
tweeted key issues as they emerged. My concluding comments attempted to distill all that had
been said—in talks and in tweets—into a prescription for next steps.
So, what did we learn? In some ways, the MARCH forum showcased themes that
surface at all discussions of Imperiled Promise. Workgroup tweets, in particular, repeated
common themes by way of questions: How do we improve communication within and beyond
the agency? How do we harness passion? Where can the NPS find advocates? Insomuch as
tweets captured something of the tone of the workgroup discussions, they reveal Imperiled Promise’s capacity to raise the right questions. At the same time, these overarching concerns—
communication, passion, and advocacy—keyed neatly with the more regional-specific
reflections, admonitions, and aspirations of the featured speakers. It is within these three points
of intersection, I want to suggest here, that we might discover one path toward a reinvigorated
NPS history program.
Imperiled Promise is clear on the importance of communication within the agency,
recommending that it “implement multiple avenues of ongoing communication among NPS
historians” (Imperiled Promise, 66). More remarkable than this advice, which seems
commonsensical, are the circumstances that prompt it. Among the report’s most dire findings is
that “NPS history is undermined by conditions that isolate both people and knowledge;
employees feel sequestered, even ’exiled’ . . . in their offices, unaware of developments across
the agency or across the profession” (Imperiled Promise, 63). The sequestering of historians, we
learn, has not only limited their capabilities, it has undercut their stature: “For an agency
devoted to the stewardship of our most spectacular historic sites, support for professional
expertise in history is surprisingly weak” (Imperiled Promise, 67).
The relationship between communication and historical expertise is particularly noteworthy because, as the report demonstrates, there seems to be little consensus within the agency about what exactly historians should know and why that knowledge is important. We learn that “position qualifications for historians do not require advanced training in history . . . and most parks—even historical parks—have no historian on staff” (Imperiled Promise, 67). That structural barriers prevent historians from thinking collectively about their role within the
agency has given rise to fundamental questions: What does it mean to be an NPS historian? What must a historian know? To whom ought the agency turn for historical expertise if it’s not internally available? Should the NPS reckon this expertise against traditional academic standards; or is it time, as Northeast Regional Historian Christine Arato suggested at the MARCH forum, to “deconstruct expertise” by way of breaking down longstanding intellectual silos within both the NPS and the broader historical community?
These questions, it turns out, are not unique to the NPS. The so-called crisis in the
humanities, which we hear so much about in university history departments, is itself a veiled
debate over the nature of expertise. Pundits argue that hyper-specialization within the
humanities has driven students to more “practical” majors and eroded funding for disciplines like
history. And yet, the numbers tell a different story: humanities enrollments have remained
more-or-less stable for decades. So, wherein lies the real crisis? Presumably it resides within
the politicized bickering between proponents of humanities expertise that clings tightly to the
“classics” and those who’d rather explore issues of power and identity in our own time. The real
problem, however—as Mary Rizzo, MARCH’s Public Historian in Residence, points out—is that
this culture war has obscured an even graver crisis: the academy’s stubborn inability to recognize
“the good humanities work done by people outside universities who may not have traditional
credentials.”
However, while the academy seems content to grumble passively about trends in higher
education, the NPS appears to be confronting the question of expertise head on. At the MARCH
forum, for instance, NPS staff historian Lu Ann Jones described how Imperiled Promise is
shaping a new battery of courses sponsored by the agency’s Academy for Cultural Resources, an
in-house career development program. Its History Initiative curriculum aims to facilitate
agency-wide communication about “the nature and value of historical thinking, the particular
ways that history is done in the agency, and the importance of historical thinking to resources management, site interpretation, and policy decisions.”4 It is a vitally important effort made even
more so by the simplicity of its core question: why should we think historically?
In fact, I argue that this initiative offers a template for advancing the entire history
profession, not just the agency’s program. As Indiana University of Pennsylvania historian
Wayne Bodle explained at the forum, the NPS has always inspired new ways of understanding
the past. Bodle recalled how his pioneering research at Valley Forge forced him to break several
“old graduate school dictum[s].” He couldn’t, for instance, situate his research within any
significant historiography, because it didn’t exist. Nor was it possible, given deadlines and the
difficulty of gathering primary sources, to begin the project with a concise thesis. Rather, Bodle
had to think differently about his work; he had to learn to sustain, in his words, “multiple
historical imaginations” toward understanding what happened at Valley Forge during the
American Revolution. It is precisely this kind of history making—creative, flexible, and
imaginative—that we need more of across the profession.
Certainty those of us who run public history graduate programs make our best efforts to
model innovative method for our students. In fact, many of today’s most successful public
historians, including several in attendance at the MARCH forum and many who direct graduate
programs in public history, sidestepped those old graduate school “dictums” by training in
interdisciplinary fields outside of traditional history departments. Still, best efforts
notwithstanding, public history programs usually exist within history departments where they are
vulnerable to the inertia of disciplinary orthodoxy and academic business as usual. So, where
can we turn for help? Could the NPS be our hero?
I think so. I encourage the NPS not to follow, but rather to lead a national conversation about the future of history education by aggressively asserting itself within the academy, especially in matters of curriculum design. I would eagerly welcome the opportunity to build a graduate program in collaboration with the NPS that would meet the agency’s needs and be inspired by the methodological flexibility that Bodle describes. The timing couldn’t be better. A perilous job market and an uncertain funding landscape make history departments more willing than ever to share expertise with whomever might lead them out of the darkness. The NPS is poised to do just that and, in the process, initiate an unprecedented and transformative educational partnership.
Innovative training partnerships will raise up a new generation of passionate NPS history
workers. But what of passion among the agency’s current workforce, which counts over twenty
thousand strong? Certainly few organizations boast more engaged employees than the NPS, a
fact illustrated by the dedication of its Ranger corps despite the indignities of seasonal labor.
And yet the call for passion that emerged during the MARCH forum recalled for me a moment
that muddies the picture. Like Bodle, I also once worked as a contract historian for the agency,
writing an administrative history of a park established in the 1930s. I discovered early on that
very few among the park’s staff knew much about its institutional history and even less about
how shifts in agency-wide directives had, over the years, complicated their work lives, rarely for
the better. It wasn’t that they hadn’t noticed change. Indeed, they had, but wrongly (in most
cases) attributed it to the whims of successive superintendents.
Whatever passion these individuals had initially brought to their work succumbed, in
many cases, to tensions spawned by basic misunderstanding. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Among Imperiled Promise’s most compelling findings is that “insufficient attention is paid to the
stewardship of the agency’s own history, and the consequences both undermine research,
interpretation, and management and create inefficiencies” (Imperiled Promise, 97). Its solution: actively “curate the agency’s institutional memory” and make it widely available so that parks
can “incorporate their own histories … into interpretation” (Imperiled Promise, 99). It is a
recommendation that strikes near to my heart. I’ve argued for years now—ever since writing my
administrative history, in fact—that the agency is overdue for a big dose of reflexivity. But what
if we were to push harder? What would it look like if EVERY employee, not just historians and
interpreters, were compelled to grapple with the agency’s past?
It might very well look like the semester during which I taught NPS history for Temple
University’s ProRanger Program, which trains undergraduates for law enforcement careers in the
agency. The curriculum is, as one might suspect, mostly concerned with matters of criminal
justice. But shouldn’t these students know something too about how the agency works and why
it exists? That question motivated my design of the course, which situates the agency’s century
of change within the context of global history while also explaining key legislation, how parks
get made and remade, and shifting organizational hierarchies. Students who came in completely
unaware of how issues like budget sequestration affect parks left with a newfound passion for
protecting them. The NPS, they concluded, might be the last hope for cultivating in Americans
what some students described as a kind of positive nationalism—that is, a feeling of commitment
to the nation not born of fear or tragedy, but of the simple fact that we all share in a fascinating
and complex story.
Could the NPS use history to cultivate this kind of passion throughout its ranks? That it
must was born out recently by the inane spectacle of Congress berating the agency, even
individual rangers in some cases, for closing parks amid a government shutdown. How will
these front-line workers survive our era of political bullying if not with a sophisticated
understanding of how the agency has responded to and withstood previous attacks? How can weexpect them to be NPS advocates without appreciating its past in the broadest terms? Larger
concerns about advocacy also emerged at the MARCH forum, and well they should. If the
recent shutdown fracas is any indicator, the NPS is in desperate need of advocates. No end of
entreaties by the bureau head, the Interior Secretary, or even Ken Burns himself can begin to
generate the kind of support that the agency needs to endure in years ahead. To survive, the
agency must make advocates of those Americans for whom the parks are little more than real
estate.
In this way too, history can help. Imperiled Promise notes a tendency within the agency
toward “’defensive history’ [stemming from] timidity in the face of controversy or criticism.”
Consequently, the authors assert, the NPS “underestimate[s] visitors and view[s] them as people
to be instructed rather than listened to and engaged” (Imperiled Promise, 106). History making
within the NPS is most timid in the face of exactly those issues that conjure the greatest passions
among Americans. But precisely because passion is a gateway to advocacy, NPS history must be
a first responder to hot-button issues. Of course, those issues that visitors are most passionate
about aren’t always what we professionals might suspect. At Valley Forge National Historical
Park, for instance, what stirred passions most during the October shutdown was the inability of
joggers to make use of what, in Philadelphia’s crowded suburbs, is all-too-scarce public space.
Protestors organized “patriot runs” across the shuttered park and risked fines or worse just to
voice their opposition to the closure.
Photograph by Julie Roncinske, courtesy Rutgers – Camden
Wrongheaded though it was, this act of civil disobedience reveals that Americans are in
fact passionate about their parks, even if for reasons that historians don’t anticipate. But it also
reveals that those same people understand very little about the difficulties of managing parks,
particularly during our era of limited federal support. How, then, might the NPS harvest misguided passion in service of its own mission? It may be as simple as asking. At the MARCH forum, former Valley Forge deputy superintendent (and current NPS Northeast Region Chief of Interpretation) Barbara Pollarine recalled the decision to host a meeting at the park about the challenge of designing recreational facilities that don’t overshadow history programing. But rather than invite participants via the usual media outlets, Pollarine posted signs on restrooms frequented by the park’s recreational users. The result: “standing room only public meetings” attended by runners, cross-country skiers, dog walkers, and other stakeholders the park had never
before encountered in a formal setting. Had this strategy been institutionalized over the long run, we may have heard a very different message from the patriot runners.
And had Valley Forge access to the sort of sophisticated history apparatus that Imperiled
Promise imagines, we might also suspect that the shutdown would have prompted a perfectly
teachable moment. Its causes, after all—especially disagreement over the purpose of federal
government—are particularly germane to the Revolutionary-era concerns that constitute Valley
Forge’s interpretive bailiwick. What better occasion, then, to reframe old historical questions in
contemporary terms while educating visitors about the institutional dilemmas park managers
struggle with every day? What better occasion to fulfill Imperiled Promise’s call for civic
engagement, to “embrace open-ended approaches to and multiple perspectives on experience,
that acknowledge change over time, and that invite visitors to develop skills of empathy as they
stand in the shoes of others” (Imperiled Promise, 117).
Perhaps it is the agency’s commitment to civic engagement more than anything that must
mature if the NPS is to endure another century. As the report puts it, the agency’s vision must
“extend beyond fostering ’ownership in the NPS mission’ to embrace possibilities for larger
societal change” (Imperiled Promise, 114). This sentiment was clearly shared by those of my students who left the NPS history course looking to the agency for new purchase on our national
saga. Patriotic platitudes, however, will not be enough to energize a generation for whom the
September 11 attacks were a formative moment. I sense in these young people a deep fatigue
born of our nation’s persistent politicization of terror. And like the forum participant who
tweeted “why is there so little diversity at these discussions?” they are searching for a point of
access to a collective national identity that is flexible, fluid, and open to critique. Providing it is
the perfect goal for a reinvigorated NPS history program, and perhaps its only chance for
survival.
Further Reading
Collegial questioning: A new forum on history in the US National Park Service, a three-part series reflecting on the Scholarship and Partnership forum, published at the Public History Commons: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Tweets, video, images, and more have been collected into a Storify.
Seth C. Bruggeman is associate professor of history at Temple University, where he directs the
Center for Public History. He has served as administrative historian at the NPS’s George
Washington Birthplace National Monument and as site reviewer for NPS’s Boston National
Historical Park and Minute Man National Historical Park. Bruggeman is the author of Here,
George Washington was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National
Monument (2008) and editor of Born in the USA: Birth and Commemoration in American Public
Memory (2012).