Social Issues and Public History: Immigrants and Integration in California

Abstract

AT THE CONFERENCE, Pluralism, Racism, and Public Policy, held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on February 15-16, 1979, the questions arose as to what is history and what is the function of an academic program that seeks to produce historians.' The debate over these questions was lively and controversial, centering on essentially two ideas. First, the public historian is one versed in the traditional skills of the historian but who applies those skills outside the university. Accordingly, a program designed to train such historians generally may do so in accordance with the demands of the public and private market place. Graduates may serve as historians for museums, as historical advisors to local land state projects, as writers of local histories for community governments, as researchers for various business interests or as consultants to private and public interests. Public historians are active, not passive, but in certain ways may be captives of the market place. Their jobs are determined by the