The Past Speaks

The media reports that the University of Ottawa will be launching a school of government modelled on the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

What isn’t yet clear is whether historians and the study of history will play the same role in the University of Ottawa’s School of Government as they do at the Kennedy School.  The founding director of the Kennedy School was a historian, Richard E. Neustadt,  who believed that the study of history was essential for future policymakers. The Harvard Kennedy School still has an active Seminar on History and Policy. Historians who are full-time appointees at or cross appointed to the Kennedy school include Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Nancy F. Koehn, and Alex Keyssar. Michael Ignatieff, who is also on the faculty there, was trained as a historian,

One hopes that the University of Ottawa’s new school will take history seriously and hire historians as well political scientists, IR specialists, economists, etc.