Do presidents need a 'council of historical advisers'?

Graham Ellison and Niall Ferguson, co-directors of Harvard Kennedy School's Applied History Project, make a good argument that our presidents should have a group of trained historians to help in the formulation of policy.

I've always loved the study of history, but I'm not an advocate of the "history for history's sake" school of thought. I study history to learn the lessons it can teach me, as a person and as someone given the precious right to vote. This is what Ellison and Ferguson call "applied history."

History doesn't repeat itself, as some say. But it is true, as King Solomon wrote, that there's nothing new under the sun. Human nature being human nature, there are always analogs in history that can help us navigate the present.

When I was a kid, my parents bought an encyclopedia of United States history for me. It had sixteen volumes, a new volume released each week for four months. Those sixteen volumes became well worn during my elementary school years! President Kennedy wrote the foreword to the whole thing. I was so taken with one line that I memorized the words. I still remember them fifty years later:

A knowledge of the past prepares us for the crisis of the present and the challenge of the future.

That's a truth that has never left me.

As Ellison and Ferguson point out, many policy makers are either completely or partly ignorant of history. The result is that when new challenges arise, they, in essence, "fly blind," oblivious to what history might teach them about the options they're considering. Policy decision-makers become like someone pulling the pin from a hand grenade without knowing that doing so is going to blow them and everything around them to pieces. 

A presidential council of historical advisers, operating like the Council of Economic Advisers we've had for decades, could help presidents in four ways, Ellison and Ferguson say:

• Were a Council of Historical Advisers in place today, it could consider precedents for numerous strategic problems...
• The council might study whether a former president’s handling of another crisis could be applied to a current challenge (what would X have done?).
• A president might also ask the council “what if?” questions. What if some action had not been taken, or a different action had been taken? [In essence, Ellison is here suggesting that the advisers could do after-action reviews that might help in the formulation of future policies.]
• Finally, the council might consider grand strategic questions... [i.e., Is the United States in decline?]

The ignorance of history, particularly the kind of applied history that Ellison and Ferguson are talking about, has had a destructive impact on our country. Neither American citizens nor American leaders know much about history and, as a result, stupid and often tragic mistakes are made that would otherwise be avoided. I like Ellison's and Ferguson's proposal.

It's neat, clear, and helpful

I was taught to use the Oxford comma. So, I have that bias. But I also think it gives clarity to a sentence containing lists.

Apparently, I'm not the only one. There's even going to be a debate about the Oxford comma this coming Friday.

What Women (and Men) Need as Leaders

I picked up a copy of the July/August issue of The Atlantic magazine at Laguardia Airport in New York on Thursday morning, before flying back to Columbus. It's the magazine's annual "Ideas Issue" and the featured idea was presented by Hanna Rosin in an interesting article called The End of Men: How Women Are Taking Control---of Everything.

Read it if you get the chance. There's a lot of good stuff, both in terms of summarizing ongoing trends and projecting what they all might mean for men and women in coming years. Here, I want to briefly mention one of Rosin's observations. She says:

A new kind of alpha female has appeared...the more women dominate, the more they behave...like the dominant sex...

Back in the 1970s, I excitedly looked forward to the day when women got the upper hand in society. I reasoned that with women as CEOs, mayors, governors, police chiefs, factory supervisors, college presidents, and such, the institutions they led, and the country at large, would experience seismic (and compelling) shifts. Female leaders, I thought, would bring more collaborative, even nurturing styles of leadership to their work, making institutions more humane and nurturing and because there would be less turf-battling, more productive.


In some cases, as Rosin points out between the lines in her article, those outcomes have evidenced themselves as more women lead more institutions.

But increasingly, as females have become socialized to gender equality and women have become leaders, supervisors, managers, and such, many women seem to have adopted the very harsh and dominating behaviors once associated with men.


In my twenty-six years as a pastor, a role which I have always felt called for collaboration, the harshest criticism I've received has come from women urging me to be more "assertive" as a leader, by which I've usually felt they meant I should not worry about giving people their say, but just do what I wanted to do. "Leaders," I've had to explain, "aren't dictators." There are always some women who, even more than men, seem disappointed to hear me say that.


In my college days, excited by the rise of the modern feminist movement, I would hardly have imagined such a scenario. But then I wasn't a Christian back then either. My atheism and faith in human nature militated against realism about human beings, be they women or men.


As a Christian, I came to see certain important realities, though.


First: There is no fundamental difference between men and women. The domination of one gender over another by whatever means, isn't God-given, but acculturated, something we're taught. Genesis says of the creation of humanity and of the genders:

Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them...(Genesis 1:26-27)

Male and female both were created in God's image, neither one reflecting that image less than the other. Men and women are equal then.


Second: Both men and women are prone to the same faults. Exhibit one of this can be seen in a passage of Scripture I cited in my sermon last Sunday, the story of how Adam and Eve abandoned defending one other when they disobeyed God by eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The condition of sin means that, no matter our gender, we can engage in sin. We can be alpha males or alpha females. We each can be devastatingly hurtful to others, ourselves, and to God.


I'm glad to be living in an era in which women are making dramatic--and increasingly unquestioned--strides toward true equality. But Rosin's article suggests what the Bible, in many and various ways, taught long ago: It's foolish to trust that the domination of either women or men will bring enlightened human leadership.


That can only come from people--female or male--whose knees are bent and hearts are turned to God. "The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge," King Solomon wrote under God's guidance (Proverbs 1:7). Solomon forgot that truth and so, in spite of his acquisition of power, influence, wealth, and wives, left a house of cards for a kingdom on his death. May we all--male, female, leader, follower--not repeat his mistake, instead putting God first in our priorities. When we do that, we won't be alpha-, beta-, or anything- people. We'll simply be people leading useful lives, affirming the equal usefulness of others' lives.