Building a Model Public History Program: The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State

Abstract

The Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for the production and publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, has survived hard times with respect to human and financial resources and public criticism, in the last decade of the twentieth century, to emerge as a model for the conduct of public history at the onset of the twenty-first century. The Office meets the mission of the State Department by providing policy-supportive historical studies for the Secretary of State, other State Department principals, and the White House and by engaging in an ever-expanding series of historical outreach programs aimed at new and old audiences. Serving its institutional client in this way has allowed the Office to increase its connections and find common ground not only with diplomatic historians but also with public historians and others in the larger historical profession.