Imperiled Promise: The State of History in NPS

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We make two cross-cutting recommendations to bring together leadership empowered to implement the best and most useful of the suggestions offered here: a History Leadership Council (recommendation 1.2), comprising the agency’s most talented and influential historians and interpreters; and a History Advisory Board (2.1), comprising the nation’s leading public history professionals from beyond the agency—the most innovative curators, the most insightful scholars, the most savvy administrators. With these two bodies providing much-needed leadership, other needs (dissolving internal barriers and fostering interconnection, better engaging the agency’s own history, and learning of and from some of the most exciting developments both within and beyond the agency) should fall more readily into place. We conclude by enjoining the OAH and the history profession more broadly to embrace and enlarge their efforts to support history in the NPS, through expansion of the partnership that produced this report and through other creative efforts to make common cause in the interest of rearticulating a reinvigorated public and civic role for national parksbased history for a new era.


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