Monthly Archives: January 2015

In the third season of Star Trek, The Original Series, an episode called “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” tells the story of a female telepath traveling with a Medusan in the 23rd century on the Starship Enterprise.  Medusans are emotionally beautiful but must hide their appearance from humans as seeing them causes insanity.

The telepath, a beautiful human, is jealous of Mr. Spock, the half-Vulcan, half-human science officer on the Enterprise, when he mind links with the shielded Medusan ambassador.  But when she connects with Spock, she comes to understand what he experienced and lets go of her jealousy.  That we don’t live in the world of science fiction and can’t mind-meld doesn’t mean we can’t try to walk in others’ shoes.

I thought about that episode when I read a recent column by Anita Woolley, Thomas W. Malone, and Christopher Chabris in the New York Times about “Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others.”  They pointed to something Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie mentioned in Wiser, too.  The importance in working together of reading social cues and understanding others.   As in Wiser, the authors found that women’s participation in groups increases the chance of good results in collaborative work.  They observed that

“Online and off, some teams consistently worked smarter than others. More surprisingly, the most important ingredients for a smart team remained constant regardless of its mode of interaction: members who communicated a lot, participated equally and possessed good emotion-reading skills.

This last finding was another surprise. Emotion-reading mattered just as much for the online teams whose members could not see one another as for the teams that worked face to face. What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as ‘Theory of Mind,’ to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe.”

A year ago, the Archives & Archivists Listserv imploded during a conversation about education and employment opportunities.   You saw clues as to what had gone wrong on Twitter.   Some students, job seekers, younger archivists who were job insecure, expressed frustration at lack of understanding by veterans who told “back in my day” stories.

I wasn’t a subscriber to the List last January.  But I read the exchanges online.  As I later noted at the Off the Record blog, the group would have benefited from something many managers and executives strive to achieve.   Open leadership.  Leadership premised in a simple question that forms the core of books such as Wiser:  “How does it look to you?”

I later heard more about the education and employment issues last August, at the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists.  I was present for some discussions and heard the thoughtful observations of archivists such as Sam Winn.  Twitter provided me great opportunities to keep up with sessions I could not attend.  I found Rebecca Goldman’s Tweeting especially notable.

Social Media provides pathways to understanding others.  If you approach Twitter and blogs with an open mind and an open heart, you’ll see many diverse people–different in terms of race, gender, sexual preference, lifestyle, political affiliation, age, professional experiences, and economic class.  If you give them space to talk, as my sister did with a colleague at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), you’ll hear them tell you, “I go home to a very different place than you.”

To partner with others, we need to step out of our own homes and into the larger world.  To look beyond the superficial.  To do more than just take quick glances at images.   To use fewer filters.  And most importantly, to strive to create safe space.  To listen as others talk about their experiences.  To ask questions.  And to intuit or try to recognize unspoken needs and yearnings.

My father worked as a journalist in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.  After he came to the United States in 1950, he worked as a radio scriptwriter in federal service at the Voice of America, a component of the United States Information Agency.  In his personal time, he wrote short stories and novels, some of which are in the Library of Congress.

What would you say, if you knew only that about my Dad, and I showed you this picture?  And said it was taken in Harlem in 1950?  Perhaps you might guess that someone snapped a photo while he was gathering information.  That he was taking notes for a news or a feature story.  Or exploring a neighborhood he wanted to write about in a short story.

But that was not the case.   Dad came to the United States as a nearly penniless war refugee.  He needed to support himself and my mother, whom he married in New York City in 1950.  So he took any job he could.  A night clerk at a cheap hotel in Manhattan.  A watchman at a construction site in Harlem.  Hired to prevent the occasional vandalism that occurs at such sites.

It was while my father was working at the construction site that a friend stopped by with a camera and took a couple of photos of him on the job.   I’ll explain in a moment how and why Dad knew the men in the photo.  And why they have their arms around each other.

Phil Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, observed in 1963:   “So let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.”  As Anthony Grafton and James Grossman explained so well in “Habits of Mind,” after the work of the journalist is done, the historian looks again at past events, strives to listen to the voices in the archives, and to understand.

Understanding requires reaching out.  Setting aside filters.   Walking in others’ shoes.   Not just in examining archival records.  But in looking at archives themselves.  This isn’t always easy.  And good intentions sometimes go awry.  When it surveyed historians in 2013, the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations (SHAFR) pointed to low morale at the National Archives.  But a comment from the SHAFR chair overlooked some elements that affect morale.   I discussed the framing and results of the SHAFR survey in March 2014.

That there is little promotion potential for employees in field locations is a managerial challenge NARA first pointed to in 2009.  The Office of Personnel Management sets education and experience requirements for jobs at federal agencies such as the National Archives.  Some workers basically move and shelve boxes all day.   There are limited options for increased financial compensation, promotion, or variety in work assignments.

We don’t all have the same opportunities.  Circumstances and luck play a part in our careers.  Dad’s education, prior work experience as a journalist, and, yes, white privilege, suggested he would not stay in the job at the construction site in Harlem for long.  Still, he faced periods of unemployment early in his life in the United States.

Luck played a part in my Dad entering federal service.  The Voice of America broadcasting services were staffing up and sought bilingual scriptwriters with journalistic experience.  Dad landed the job with the United States Information Agency that enabled him to support our family in a middle class lifestyle.

I got my job as an archivist under similar circumstances, with timing a factor.   In 1976, the National Archives was staffing up its Office of Presidential Libraries in anticipation of a decision by the Supreme Court on the Nixon records statute.  It then had an Office of Presidential Papers (below) in the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB).  (Richard Nixon had a “hideaway” office in the OEOB as President.) Archivists who had signed on prior to 1974, thinking they would soon relocate to a Nixon Presidential Materials Project in California at the end of Richard Nixon’s second term in office, had moved on to other jobs.

Except for the fact that institutions sometimes have to recruit employees in the face of unforeseen events, how I got my job isn’t relevant to present-day job seekers.   Moreover, they face a much worse job market today than I did.  We veteran archivists, librarians, and historian-archivists need to take this into account and listen to students and job seekers.  To pay it forward and to think in terms of a team.  (That applies in other professional situations, as well.)  This is where the story about my Dad’s experience in Harlem that I’m about to share is more significant than my own story.  His story points to timeless lessons.

I often quote President Barack Obama’s comments about what we can and cannot control.  “I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.”  And I believe in paying it forward.   Before he came to the United States, my father was known as a journalist and novelist.  A modest person who did not  keep grasping for the brass ring.  But who made an effort to mentor and help other writers despite having some prestige and status.

When he came to New York City as a war refugee who fled his homeland, Dad left behind that status.  He had little money.  He spoke English, but it was not his native language.  He was 53 at the time the photo was taken.  Guarding a construction site would not have been Dad’s job of first choice.  He would rather have been paid to do what he later did, writing news scripts for the federal government.

The two men with whom he’s pictured were not his fellow paid employees.  (Unfortunately, I do not know their names.  Nor how they fared later in life, something I think of when I see the photo.) But at that moment in Harlem, in 1950, the three men formed a team–on their own.

The men lived near the construction site and stopped by at times to help Dad chase away vandals.   They wanted to prevent or stop pointless destruction that they thought would harm their neighborhood and their community.   By voluntarily helping him, they helped Dad succeed, which meant he kept his job.  And they helped the contractor and helped those who lived in their neighborhood.

The photo was taken one year before I was born.  Three men, one white, privileged in relative terms, salaried, soon to secure a good job; two African-Americans, acting without pay, doing what they could to help the community.  And to help my Dad. Their arms around each other at a time when racial segregation was causing pain and hardship in homes different from the one in which I would be lucky to grow up.

I am in a good place now.  At peace.  My Nixonara stories were worth sharing at my blog when I started Nixonara in 2010.  Of course.  Personal reminiscences of events you won’t find covered in traditional news reporting.  Or hearings.  Or audits or investigations.  But my Nixonara stories now are part of history.  I’ve replaced my original “Nixon and NARA, the Story” page here with one that tells a similar story, brings it up to date, and has closed dates:  “Nixon and NARA, 1974-2014.”

My writing about access to the Nixon records on the Archives & Archivists Listserv and elsewhere from 1997 to 2010 was based on deep concern that others might be hurt or mistreated, caught in crossfire and unable to defend themselves.   What happened to my archival cohort was painful.  But as NARA officials acted properly in releasing Nixon’s records, I stopped worrying in recent years that the experiences of my cohort might be repeated in federal service.  So I stopped sharing them again and again.

And as I stopped talking, I became better able to hear others.  Their spoken and written words.  Their unspoken words.  Words that shared stories different from mine.  Yes, including others who also played a part in the Nixonara story.

It’s important to remember that there are many stories in our neighborhoods.  We hear them best if we don’t focus only on our own hardships, needs or past pain.  We hear when we step back and listen.  And then step up.  And step forward.

A blog post which sounds as if it is about the past, and touches initially on days of old.  But then moves on to look at the future and the skills historians will need to bring with them into the archives to study the present, especially in Fedland.

Reading the reactions to Kathleen Roe’s Challenge No. 4, “Why I am an archivist,” lifted my spirits on a rainy day in Washington yesterday.  I scrolled through the responses on the Facebook page of the Society of American Archivists, then added a link to my post, “Unafraid.”   And thought about “The Habits of Mind” described by Anthony Grafton and James Grossman.  And about the archives mosaic.

Archivists play an essential role in understanding the past.  I cherish the archival mission because it centers on sharing knowledge.  But I cannot say we open the door to full knowledge of or insights into past lives or events.   No, I’m not thinking of the debate over gatekeepers and how best to handle users’ needs.  I mean the records we provide are part of a mosaic which has many other parts to it.  And parts that forever will remain unfilled.

When I say archivists are unafraid of the information in records, I mean we are not vested in the contents of the materials we process and make available for research.   Nor are we vested in the conclusions of those who use the records which we process to “make access happen.”  That remains my vibe now.  I read the books and articles and blog posts others write.  But you don’t see me choosing sides in debates among scholars, journalists, and other users about how to interpret the records I once worked to release to the public.

That we do not see ourselves as part of the story is something I learned early on during my career with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).   The photo shows my team members and I working with Richard Nixon’s Vice Presidential records on a temporary duty assignment in California in 1978.

I started work at the National Archives in December 1976, two years after Richard Nixon resigned from office.   I was an undergraduate during his presidency (1969-1973), a period of political polarization in the United States.  Because my campus was a few blocks from the White House, we felt the impact of dissent over United States’ policies at times.  Last month, after a public program at NARA, I talked to Fox News Channel’s national security analyst K T McFarland about that time.

Over the Christmas holidays last month, my mother shared with me a box of old photos.  I smiled to see one of my late sister, Eva, and me in 1969, the last year we twins dressed alike.   Once we started college, we dressed differently to express our individualism and to attract less unwanted attention than we had in our youth.

The ringlets in our hair in 1969 also reminded me of how I sought to escape the anger and chaos of a tumultuous present in the late 1960s and early 1970s by immersing myself in the past.  I mostly read non-fiction, focusing on Western history from the 15th through the 19th centuries.   The photo Mom shared shows the same hairstyles we wore to the Inaugural Youth Ball in 1969, where I remember Tricia Nixon asking us if we were models.

Eva and I both worked on Nixon’s campaign in 1968.  (I’ve been an Independent, unaffiliated with any party, since 1989.)  Seven years after I attended the Inaugural event  I plunged directly into the events of the Nixon administration when I started my job with the National Archives’ Office of Presidential Libraries.    The records with which my team and I worked are unique in many ways, including their comprehensive nature and how the federal government acquired them.

Nixon expected to have personal control over them, as his predecessors had regarded their White House records as personal property.  Passage of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Records Act (PRMPA) in December 1974 made the portions of his records where he acted in his official capacity government property.  And this is where I turn from the past, with which, as my readers know, I now am at peace, to the future.

Historians and other observers have noted that no other president ever will have an office taping system of the type that Richard Nixon did.  But more significant changes in record keeping in the White House and federal agencies and departments mean historians will have to approach some areas of study differently than they once did.

Part of this is understanding the impact of officials writing in discoverable language, that is, with an eye on investigators and users perceived as possibly hostile to their interests.  Or on legacy.  Open government advocates and users of the Freedom of Information Act need to take this into account, as well.  Open government starts with the handling of records management in creating agencies.   This is an area few researchers (academics, journalists, advocates who file FOIA requests) study to the extent I believe that they should.  There’s a lot to be learned from the online interactions of records managers and other information professionals.

In 2002, presidential historian Michael Beschloss wrote in Presidential Studies Quarterly that

“Increasingly worried about such political dangers as subpoenas from special prosecutors, newspaper leaks, and memoirs by disgruntled ex-officials published while their ex–bosses are still in office, presidents and their chief officials shy away from putting things on paper. Public figures no longer write the kind of thoughtful, discursive letters and revealing memos that we used to see. People in Washington are more public relations savvy than in earlier times and, thus, more adept at drafting memos and other records that conceal their motives and can fool the historian.

The result of all of this is that a historian of the years of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, or their successors may not have the kind of sources needed to understand who did what to whom and why as well as a scholar might for, say, the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The result of this could be that historical scholarship on future presidents may become, of necessity, more speculative.”

If credible written information is lacking, historians have to rely on testimonial evidence (some of which cannot be corroborated) to try to fill in the gaps. Although records statutes and regulations state that government agencies must adequately document and preserve records about their mission, organization, and functions, the fear of improper disclosure can have a chilling effect on the preservation of institutional memory.

Beschloss wrote in his 2002 article,

“Ironically, the effect of increased executive branch prosecutions, the Freedom of Information Act, and similar laws has often been the opposite of their intention. By forcing surrender of documents, they have often provoked presidents and those who serve them to commit less and less revealing information to paper.”

In “Habits of Mind,” Grafton and Grossman write about historians listening in the archives to the voices of the dead.  The extent to which records document what happened and why and how people lived their lives always has varied.  Because of the elements to which Beschloss points, the best scholarship in the future will rely on a combination of empiricism and intuition.  By intuition, I don’t mean veering into speculation.  But understanding what the voices in records chose not to share or deliberately obscured.  And knowing where to look to try to fill in the gaps.  And accepting what may remain opaque.

In looking through old postings on the Archives & Archivists Listserv recently, I was struck by how I stopped talking about some issues.  For years I supported the sharing of context-free news links during the debates that erupted periodically.  But eventually I fell silent on the topic of the news links.  By the time the issue came to the fore last year, I offered no opinions at Off the Record as to the links.  Instead, I focused on other issues, such as safe space.

At my blog, I’ve pointed to the inability of knowledgeable observers to comment on news stories that lack pertinent information or are skewed due to the filters used.  My deep desire and fierce advocacy for creation of safe space and shelter  is related to how I’ve come to view public space and advocacy.   The yearning not to be silenced while others shape narratives has its roots in the past.  By that I mean my realization long ago of how a court record–irrevocable, unchangeable, static, finite–can have a major impact on history and archives–yet obscure what really happened.

Sometimes, because of its nature and requirements, reporting can’t  convey insights seen elsewhere, as in some of David Brooks’s more thoughtful columns.  In 2007, Brooks wrote about the struggles some political figures face.  He shared the story of Rep. Deborah Pryce (R – Ohio) who told him,  “I was appalled by what I had to do.”

Brooks reminds us of the cost of operating in a difficult environment, one reductive narratives cannot convey.  And he demonstrates that how someone speaks, how they write, can provide clues as to a war taking place within to preserve his or her humanity.

These never have been easy areas for historians to assess.  But as candor diminishes in certain types of records, the scholarly habit of mind will become more important.  It provides advantages for historians that lead to deeper understanding and enhancement of civic literacy.

Grafton and Grossman write, “A student of history learns that empathy, rather than sympathy, stands at the heart of understanding not only the past but also the complex present.”   This is what distinguishes the best historians, makes them architects of trust.

The heart of understanding.  That’s a gift I yearned to receive from outsiders in the past, for myself, for my fellow federal officials.  It lay behind some of my TL;DR postings about archives matters with which I littered web forums in years past.  As I’ve reached a good place personally, I’ve let go of that to a large degree.  (Yes, whew!)  Now I focus increasingly on other topics and on the future:  the inspiring work done at NARA and elsewhere to make access happen.

Part of understanding access to federal and presidential records lies in accepting the limitations at the beginning of the records life cycle.  The Freedom of Information Act has had an impact on the former.  And message discipline is important, as Cass Sunstein observes.   But some officials are open to sharing insights carefully on background, off the record, in small ways, in places of safety established by architects of trust.   You see that in some reporting.  But historians need to use with care selective revelations offered on background while in office.  As Grafton and Grossman remind us of all scholarly inquiry, to remember to ask:  “what don’t I know?”  And “whose perspective was not shared?”

Some former officials share their perspectives later in oral history interviews, if they choose to sit down and talk with researchers.  Or in public programs at the National Archives, of the type I enjoy attending because I learn so much.  And because they provide me much welcome relief in Washington   Two joint NARA and CIA symposiums on Berlin, one in 2011, one in 2013, were excellent.  So, too, a forum on Robert McNamara and the Vietnam war in 2012.  One of many reasons I regard NARA as my “intellectual home” in Washington.

Even in an age of diminished candor and increased focus on risk minimization in memorializing deliberations, there’s much to be learned from documentation, too.  The best historians will learn to trust their intuition as they study the records that make it into archives.  And know when to seek more information outside the archives.

Outside the scholarly community, seeking tight control of a narrative can be nerve wracking.  You see the tension at advocacy websites at times, which is why I mostly avoid offering comments about them on A&A.  And I rarely intrude these days on narratives in which I don’t see safe haven for myself and other historians.

Still, there is beauty in sharing knowledge where we can.  Archivists provide access to records to all who walk in the door or click on our links online.  But the most joyous part of sharing knowledge is seeing the effect on open minds.

“A good historian enters the archive not to prove a hypothesis, not to gather evidence to support a position that assumptions and theories have already formed. But to answer a question.”

I often think of what President Barack Obama said at the memorial service in Arizona after the tragic attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that resulted in the death of six people.  “I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.”  That applies to history and archives, too.  To the stories captured in records.  And our own stories, as well.