AHA Conference in D.C.

Each semester I get the joy of meeting “new” students to teach.  I use quotation marks because Rockhurst is a small enough place that I have had many of them in classes before, or perhaps I’ve been on a service trip with them or serve as their academic adviser.  Even if the mix of faces is a blend of new people and the familiar, the group dynamic of the classroom is always unique.  

Not to mention the subject matter.  Because we have a small department I have the privilege of rotating through a variety of course topics.  This journey through different ideas keeps my teaching job fresh!   I can’t imagine spending a career teaching say an introductory course and one or two upper level seminars.  While it can be challenging to keep up with such a broad scope of subject matter, I feel very intellectually alive by the dynamic.  Yet there is one commonality I have come to see across the subtopics of my discipline: history matters.  

Over break I attended my first history conference: the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.  It was held in Washington D.C., a capital city filled with mammoth scale statues, museums, and office complexes.  There is the epic grandeur of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the somber starkness of Arlington National Cemetery, and the majestic Capital Mall: backdrop to so many historical events.  Pierre L’Enfant’s Washington has been built block by block with these granite and limestone edifices that celebrate and memorialize our collective past but also stake out history’s claim on our future.  

One of the first lessons of American government is to explain what is meant by political scientists when they write about “institutions.”  It’s an early step into college level abstraction to stop thinking of political institutions as buildings, official seals, and even collections of people; but rather as the rules and procedures that shape behavior.  The budget of this year is based on what?  Last year’s budget.  We don’t write the whole thing from scratch each year, in an attempt to rebirth America every 12 months.  We just sand down the edges, move around a few things, and of course build on a bit.

The government of this country is not giant buildings or cabinet departments, but better understood as the continuing effort to solve collective problems within a decision-making framework.  This is where history comes into the social science, because this framework is a lingering response not to today’s challenges, but yesterday’s.  Semi-eroded or on life support, the tools we have in our nation’s garage to address 2014 were purchased to solve problems at various points in the past.  

For instance, the most recent omnibus spending bill capped the number of TSA agents who can be hired.  So as we move over a decade past 9/11, and American involvement in the Middle East is fading, an important institution established to protect our safety is losing its head of steam…but yet remains, chugging along.   If history is any guide it will likely remain for quite some time, even as external threats to our country change quickly.