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  • The Future Uses of History
  • Pamela Cox (bio)

In 1912, U.S. historian J. Franklin Jameson addressed the trustees of the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC on the ‘Future Uses of History’. Jameson had been a long-standing editor of the American Historical Review and used the occasion to celebrate history’s distinctive contribution to knowledge.

[History’s] independent value as a discipline will surely never cease. The severity of its methods, its merciless sifting and dissection, and comparison of human statements, will always make it the invaluable foe of credulity, the steady propagator of that methodical doubt on which enlightenment so largely depends.1

A century on, and many here in the UK fear that History’s value as an independent discipline is under serious threat. Government funding for university humanities programmes has been drastically reduced. Research funding for History has been reduced – and what remains is concentrated in a cluster of elite research-intensive universities and must, moreover, be able to demonstrate its social and economic impact. The number of students opting to study History at secondary school is declining. Increased university tuition fees may dissuade students from taking less obviously vocational degrees. Universities that are increasingly reliant on research income, robust impact stories, student enrolment and employability are beginning to look closely at their History departments and some have already closed them.2

Many have suggested ways that History might confront this current crisis. At one extreme, Michael Bailey and Des Freedman’s Manifesto for Resistance calls for action to rebut the ‘assault on universities’. At another, A. C. Grayling has led moves to establish the controversial New College of the Humanities which will charge students premium fees for the privilege of being taught by, among others, media dons. Others have rightly noted the lack of any national organization resembling the American Historical Association and the resulting absence of effective collective voice.3 [End Page 125]

This article takes a different approach to History’s crisis.4 It takes up a challenge set by Pat Thane in a recent edition of this journal. Thane observes that ‘History plays many roles in British culture’ but that it does not do enough to ‘inform ... public discourse and public policy about urgent contemporary issues’.5 How and why should historians best respond to this challenge? What do they stand to gain or lose by doing so? From the perspective of policy-makers, what benefits or drawbacks does History offer? Here I draw on my experiences of trying to combine historical, sociological and criminological approaches to two quite different policy problems. I suggest ways to create space for a new kind of critical public history along with a more urgent kind of ‘post-cultural history’. This space might also allow historians to (re)build their role as enlightened sceptics in the knowledge economy.

Historians and ‘Evidence Based Policy-Making’

In 2008 the British Academy called on the humanities to do more to ‘punch their weight’ in policy circles. The Academy believed it to be ‘essential that public policy-making is informed by high quality research in order to support the effectiveness of government decision-making’ but commented that ‘the full value of humanities and social science research ha[d] yet to be realised by policy-makers’. Chances were ‘being missed’ on both sides. Humanities researchers were ‘often unaware of opportunities ... to feed their research findings into local, regional, national or international policy debates’. Policy-makers, in turn, had a ‘limited appreciation of the way in which historic, cultural and philosophic evidence can lead to far-reaching social changes’.6

It would be simple to dismiss this as the ‘selling out’ of the humanities by one of the few prominent national bodies meant to defend them. There are many who argue that humanities research should not be reduced to meeting the utilitarian needs of governments. However, it seems indisputable that historians should aim to share their findings, and the evidence underpinning them, with others who might benefit. In practice this is easier said than done, despite increasing demands for evidence from policy-makers. Before I examine these challenges in more detail I want to explore the origins of this demand for ‘evidence...

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