A Note on Teaching: The Graduate Program in Public Historical Studies

Abstract

To THE QUESTION posed by David F. Trask-Do history and historians have a legitimate role to play in the task of making policy? -we are trying at the University of California, Santa Barbara to make a positive response. In the careers of such men as Trask at the Department of State, Wayne Rasmussen at the Department of Agriculture, and Richard Hewlett at the Department of Energy (and its predecessors) we observe distinguished examples of real possibilities in this direction at the level of Cabinet secretaries. Our concern at UCSB is to open up that almost limitless sea of state and local government in the fifty states and the immense world of private corporations. If we can build the notion here that the historical method is as valuable in understanding problems currently before decision makers as it is in understanding the Civil War, that it opens up dimensions formerly closed to them, then I believe we will have pushed open a door to a new professional role for historians which has almost no boundaries in terms of employment. We now have a second class in residence, and it may be useful to report something of what happened with the first. Essentially, our program is an option within our M.A. and Ph.D. programs, a second