A recent essay in The New Republic asks why historians have become such visible public voices during the Trump era. Katherine Kelaidis argues that figures such as Heather Cox Richardson, Jill Lepore, Joanne Freeman, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Kevin Kruse have become a new class of liberal public intellectuals, translating the past into political commentary. She identifies a real phenomenon. Historians have become more visible in American public life than they have been in decades. Where I part company with her is not over the visibility of historians, but over what readers are seeking when they turn to them. Long before Substack newsletters, podcasts, and cable news appearances, historians entered the public conversation through anniversaries, moments when publishers, editors, and readers turn to the past to make sense of the present.
For generations, editors, publishers, museums, documentary filmmakers, and television producers have turned to historians during centennials, sesquicentennials, and other commemorations to explain why events from decades—or centuries—ago still matter. Historians know these cycles well. Some welcome them; others roll their eyes. Anniversary years can produce a flood of predictable books and commemorations, encouraging familiar narratives polished for public consumption. But they also create something much more valuable: a rare opportunity to ask new questions about stories we think we already know.
