Today’s NYTimes has a great article about preservation, noting that landmarks designation is a slow and sometimes capricious process. It reveals the degree to which things like historical preservation and public history more broadly are not merely academic exercises, but professional activities fraught with practical and procedural complexity.
It is my contention that academic public historians and preservationists should do more than rail against such obstructions but should take them on as part of their professional and theoretical work. We often view such details as mere matters of implementation, and that we should focus on the so-called big picture of what needs to be preserved and why.
I would contend that this reflects historians’ engagement in other areas, too, such as teaching. In the instance of K-12 teaching, for example, historians abrogated their responsibilities and engagement in kids’ education in favor of a higher-order professional community focused around university education almost exclusively. The view from the ivory tower removed us from an important audience and also undermined our ability to shape the broader teaching of history in the schools.
I fear that public historians have too often taken this view, and need to re-engage. This article reveals why we should care about the most practical details, not merely the broad historical stories and architecture that we want to preserve.