In the business of history

Perhaps the largest challenge that faces the public historian is that we have to strive to maintain historical integrity, while catering to the demands of popular history and promoting a very often, selective past. We are trained to drag our heels on issues of historical accuracy and academic integrity. However, in the real world - well one in which we'd like to be employed anyway - we cannot ignore the fact that history is also a business. Rarely does integrity trump success and profit when it comes to any business venture, and the business of history is no different.

Historians who are willing to bend the rules of the Ivory Tower actually have many employment opportunities available to them. After all, history is everywhere, and everyone and everything has one. The tricky part is, that nobody wants to record a history they'd prefer not to remember. History is revised throughout the world. It's as extreme as denying events like the Holocaust and the Cultural Revolution even happened, to as minor as a corporation or business choosing to omit a controversial piece of its past from presentations of its history. The latter revision is one public historians must struggle with all the time, and decide what they can and cannot expose within the parameters of a project or job.

History is a very powerful and persuasive tool. As Aunt May so wisely said to Peter Parker, "with great power, comes great responsibility." What is a historian supposed to do when you discover a fascinating perspective into the past of an institution, but you are forbidden by said institution to use this information? First, you will get angry and annoyed. You spent time and effort researching and preparing the information, and you think that to leave it out would be lying about the past to serve a selfish interest in the present. However, you've been hired by a client to represent their interests, so is the customer always right?

As a public historian, you have a responsibility to history and to your employer. Your job is to act as the bridge between history and the public realm. Although you'll have to make sacrifices sometimes, you can feel good that through your efforts, you've at least ensured that more knowledge has been put out in the world, which is never a bad thing. The best you can hope for is to find a place of compromise within yourself that allows you to accept that throughout your career, you will have to constantly adapt in order to balance two completely opposing objectives. But that's exactly what it takes to succeed in the business of history.