The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 19, 2017
What role might historians committed to democratic and egalitarian politics play in challenging authoritarianism? This essay takes on conventional claims that history is absent from public debate, and that it has “lessons” to teach, arguing instead that historical thinking is ever-present and that historians can and should play a critical role in defending and deepening open societies at risk: through the making of generative pasts that undermine inevitabilities, recover lost emancipatory possibilities, and cultivate empathy.