The academic internet was recently ablaze with controversy about a conference on “Applied History” that took place at Stanford (see here, here, and here). The point of this conference was to showcase historical research that can inform policymaking, particularly the making of (US) geo-political strategy.
The conference organizers were criticized for a list of speakers that was almost exclusively male and exclusively white. Journalists at the New York Times picked up on the story and asked the main organizer, Niall Ferguson, about the lack of racial and gender diversity at the conference.
The concerns about the lack of gender and racial diversity are important and suggest that there is a need to encourage more female grad students to do historical research in areas that are relevant to the making of grand strategy. The fact that the academics at the conference are overwhelmingly based at US universities, which is even more problematic than the lack of gender and racial diversity, went un-discussed by the US academics and journalists who covered the story. However, my main problem with the Applied History is that all but one of the sessions was prescriptive and involved academics dispensing advice to policymakers rather than discussing how policymakers use history. I see from the programme that there was a lunch-time discussion with Philip Zelikow and Robert Zoellick on the subject of “Applied History in Washington since c. 2000”. Now that session would be really interesting to me, because it would involve people who are embedded within the Beltway sharing their observations about how history is being used and perhaps misused by policymakers.
So much important research has been done on how policymakers use (and misuse) historical analogy and historical knowledge. I’m thinking of the work of Khong, Jervis, and many other political scientists. There is also the historian Alix Green in this country, who has studied how historical knowledge is used in Whitehall. It is such a shame that none of these researchers were at the conference.
I am sharing the conference programme below
Day One—Friday, March 2, 2018
| Breakfast and registration | ||||||
| Welcome and opening remarks Niall Ferguson |
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Session 1: Undead Rome: the Decline, Fall and Afterlives of the Roman Empire?
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Session 2:Is Trumpism Merely Populism revisited?
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| Break | ||||||
Session 3: The China Story
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| Lunch Discussion with Aaron O’Connell and Fredrik Logevall: Déjà Vu All Over Again? Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Search for Lessons in History
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Session 4: The Ecological Origins of Economic and Political Systems
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Session 5: Kicking Away the Ladder? Cryptocurrencies in Historical Perspective
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| Adjourn | ||||||
| Tour of Hoover Archives Eric Wakin |
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Session 6: Is Putin’s Russia a Potemkin Power? Leadership, Succession and Russian Foreign Policy
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| Reception | ||||||
| Dinner
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Day Two—Saturday, March 3, 2018
| Breakfast | ||||||
Session 7: The History of the Future
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Session 8: Thinking Historically: A Cold War Historian’s Reflection on Policy
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| Break | ||||||
Session 9: How Might 21st-Century Deglobalization Unfold?
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Session 10: Same As It Ever Was: The History of Inequality and Mobility
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| Lunch Discussion with Philip Zelikow and Robert Zoellick: Applied History in Washington since c. 2000 |
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Session 11: Wine and Winning: From Muhammad to the Islamic State, a Tangled Relationship
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Session 12: Defeating an Idea: What the Cold War Can Teach Us About How States Fight Ideologies
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| Adjourn |
The Past Speaks 
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