Embracing a More Honest Reckoning with History — A Historian’s Perspective on Education, Battling the Culture Wars in Schools, and Liberation
An Interview with Professor Timothy Patrick McCarthy
Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), he is Core Faculty in both the Foundations Curriculum and the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship Program. At the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), where he was the first openly gay/queer faculty member and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ matters, he is Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Public Leadership and Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Dr. McCarthy is the Stanley Paterson Professor of American History and Academic Director emeritus in the Boston Clemente Course, a free college humanities course for lower income adults in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal from President Obama.
A noted historian of politics and social movements, he is the author or editor of six books, including Reckoning with History: Unfinished Stories of American Freedom (Columbia UP, 2021) and Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in an Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love, forthcoming from the New Press.
Twice named one of Harvard Crimson’s “Professors of the Year,” Dr. McCarthy has received many awards for his commitment to students. Inspired by the activism and organizing of his student years, Dr. McCarthy has devoted his life to public service and social justice. He currently serves as Board Chair for Free the Slaves, a leading global NGO in the fight against modern slavery, and also hosts and directs A.R.T. of Human Rights and Resistance Mic! through the Tony Award-winning American Repertory Theater, where he serves on the Board of Advisors. See Dr. McCarthy’s full bio here.
Julie Allen: As we emerge from over a year of online schooling and contemplate returning to class in person, you have moved from the Kennedy School, Harvard’s public policy school, to join the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). How does, and perhaps more importantly how should, the education academy inform and impact the practices and policies of education, particularly at this historic moment?
Timothy Patrick McCarthy: Graduate schools of education have at their core the mandate and goal of educating educators, giving them a space to reflect, grow, and develop skills together so that they can have a positive and hopefully transformative impact in the world. Our students usually already have careers in education. They have been teachers or school leaders or education reformers or policymakers. We aren’t getting people who don't understand the value of schools; we're getting people because they understand the value of schools. They may have lots of different ideas about pedagogy and practice, what schools should look like and be like, how we should fund them and who should get to go to them. But I have yet to meet anyone at HGSE who is hostile to schools and education. The bottom line is we provide a vital space for people who are already committed to improving educational systems in this moment. As faculty, we also have a responsibility to help our students navigate this nearly impossible time, which continues to pose real challenges and obstacles for education. Hit by the pandemic without warning, educators (like everyone else) had to recalibrate, reimagine, and reinvent what we were doing in real time without any precedents. In addition to the global pandemic, the renewed culture wars over what should be taught in American schools is another major disruption challenging education and educators right now. Intense debates are swirling around history and how we teach it, race and racism, gender and LGBTQ issues, to say nothing of masks, vaccines, and all the rest. Schools are once (and yet) again a battleground in the culture wars, ancient in some ways, but also very contemporary. Since those of us at schools of education care deeply about schools and children, we need to be on the front lines of these debates. I don’t pretend to speak for any of my colleagues at HGSE, but I think we need to lean into this, to become fierce and formidable culture warriors in our own right. Students who take my courses on brave leadership and communication, racial equity in education, and LGBTQ politics and policy tend to be interested in these big systemic issues. Many of them want to be more effective culture warriors right now. I’m thrilled to do that work with them.
Allen: To pick up on something you touched on -- over the four years of the Trump administration, facts, truth, science all became provisional and subject to debate. The political battles and culture wars today are being fought on the battlefield of our nation’s schools -- from online speech to high school athletics to the history curriculum. Do these battles in our schools demonstrate that Nelson Mandela was right when he said that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”?
McCarthy: I’ve been inspired by Nelson Mandela for a very long time. When I was a first-year student at Harvard College in the fall of 1989, before I even registered for classes, I attended a student solidarity rally demanding that Harvard divest its riches from South African apartheid. So I take what President Mandela says very seriously. There’s some deep truth in what he says and yet a real challenge too. It takes a lot of work for schools to be the antidote to the ongoing madness of our culture and politics, a “weapon” against the prejudices, fictions, and mythologies that are so pervasive. We all know we’re living in a perilous time. But I’m a historian, so I tend to take the long view on most things. There have been perilous times before. There are some similarities between what we're experiencing now and what we've experienced in the past. When I think of my own origin and evolution as an educator, I came of age when critical race theory, multiculturalism, social history, ethnic studies, African American studies, and gender and sexuality studies were really emerging. I was a beneficiary of those intellectual revolutions and the new knowledge and fields they produced. I am old enough to remember the debates over the rainbow curriculum in New York, and the early debates over multiculturalism and teaching the histories and lived experiences of people who had long been discriminated against, silenced, or erased from the history books. In other words, there's nothing entirely new about what we're experiencing now. The core of this crisis is that we're not all operating from the same sets of facts, truths, and realities. To some extent, that's always been the case. But when we're debating whether the January 6th insurrection was a violent attempt to overturn an election and overthrow the government OR just a loving, if energetic, afternoon visit to the U.S. Capitol by patriotic tourists, we are operating from two fundamentally different realities. We can’t have a rational debate about vaccines and masks if one group of people understands that we're living in the middle of a global pandemic and another group thinks the virus that caused the pandemic is a hoax. So we're really in a treacherous and perilous place. Yet, I always go back to history, particularly the critical teaching of history, because it has the potential to bust the myths and puncture the master narratives that we've been taught about how great America is -- that “beacon of freedom,” that “city on a hill,” this place where things like freedom, equality, and rights are always expanding. These myths and master narratives have been used to generate a pervasive sense that the United States is truly exceptional, better than anywhere else, a model for how the rest of the world should be. Sure, you can talk about “the founding” as a revolutionary moment, an act of civil disobedience, a rebellion against monarchy and colonial tyranny in favor of democracy and representative government. You can tell that story, about “all men are created equal” and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Or you can tell another story about the author of those prophetic words, who was a slaveholder, rapist, white supremacist, and plantation owner who was drowning in debt. So what do we do with these two different stories? Personally, I’m much more interested in teaching a “both/and” version of history. I don't think there's any other alternative. If we raise generations of children, as we have long done, with only the romantic, rose-colored narrative of the country, then we are not actually teaching people to be critical about the past, the present, or the future. Exposing and illuminating the “other” stories -- say, about race and racism -- that are also at the core of the nation's history will lead people to be more conscious of and critical about the myths and master narratives that we've all been taught. From my perspective, that is not only a very good thing but also a potentially redemptive thing that could help to propel the country in a direction that might get us closer to those elusive founding promises of freedom, equality, and rights. It is that critical thinking that schools should be cultivating in students. Only then will we be able to fully reckon with the nation’s “original sins” -- slavery, genocide, white supremacy -- and their many inheritances.
Allen: Teaching the both/and version of history, which has been labeled “critical race theory” (CRT) in the headlines, is one of those culture wars being fought in schools today. Legislation has been passed in several states banning teaching CRT, defined by these laws, among other things, to include teaching history that makes students experience discomfort. While that legislative language is very vague, these bans are aimed at teaching about our nation’s past and present racist, sexist, and homophobic laws, policies, practices, and social norms. Can we understand the present, can we create a better future, without an honest interrogation of our history?
McCarthy: Absolutely not. That’s precisely what I’m talking about: historical erasure in service to mythical exceptionalism. In order to craft the master narrative of America as a “beacon of freedom” with everything to give and teach the world, you must erase the many inconvenient truths of our history embedded in the lived experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples, immigrants and workers, women and queer people, people who are differently abled, indeed all people who have been denied freedom, denied equality, denied rights -- those of us who are on the downside of privilege and the outside of power. Those who have had power and privilege have been a small minority over the long history of the United States, whether you date the birth of the nation at 1619 or 1776 or 1789. The so-called “founding fathers” represented a small minority, all of whom shared similar racial, sexual, gender, socioeconomic, educational, and religious identities. To create a master narrative of exceptionalism, you have to erase the truths of everyone else, who, frankly, are the vast majority of “we the people.” The historians and teachers who are putting forward a more complicated, honest version of the country’s history are trying to counter this erasure and call out the myths of exceptionalism. My question to the master narrators is this: why do you want this thing you love to be a lie? Why not embrace a more honest reckoning with history -- as well as the present? Related to this is what W.E.B. DuBois called “The Propaganda of History” in his brilliant 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America. He cautioned against the use of history “for inflating our national ego.” He called out the use of history as propaganda to generate a kind of patriotism that he saw as a false love of country. It’s not the job of history, historians, or teachers of history to get people to love their country. The principal goal of studying any nation’s history should be to understand the country more deeply, with all its contradictions and shortcomings as well as the things that inspire affection and pride. James Baldwin once wrote: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” We should all be at least as critical as we are loving.
Allen: At this moment, which you describe as perilous, how do we do a better job of educating an informed citizenry and driving civic engagement, which involves both individual and collective action? Franklin Roosevelt called education “the real safeguard of democracy,” noting that those who participate in decision-making must be equipped to do so wisely. I think you were starting to touch on that, the need to see the full context to engage in critical decision-making.
McCarthy: Both Mandela and Roosevelt make lofty claims, each true and not yet true. We all have our own aspirational metaphors. I talk about schools being “incubators of democracy.” I think schools can be and should be. But some are, and some aren’t. I tend to agree with the aspirational claim that President Roosevelt is making, but there's no case that can be made -- based in truth, then or now -- that American schools are really “safeguards of democracy,” given all the inequities that exist along lines of race, class, geography, and the like. In other words, schools need to become representations of democracy before they can be safeguardsof democracy. In many instances, schools are more segregated now than they were in 1954, the year of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Given this painful reality, can schools ever become “safeguards of democracy,” incubators of anything good? Of course they can! And some schools are doing a model job of this. I believe that's where the critical teaching and learning comes in. Democracy is not the de facto political arrangement of every human society. One could argue, based on abundant historical precedent, that peoples’ instincts are more individualistic than collective, more hierarchical than egalitarian, more selfish than selfless. As long as we have these forces to contend with, schools are going to reflect the social, political, material, and behavioral orientations of the broader public. We have to be mindful of that. We have to understand that schools are situated within broader contexts and communities that are often complicit in inequality. Schools won’t be safeguards of democracy until we transform all these dynamics.
Allen: So the question remains whether we are getting closer to or farther away from the ideal. Horace Mann famously called education the “great equalizer of conditions of men-the balance wheel of the social machinery.” Can we expect education to be the great equalizer when wealth, income, and opportunity gaps have widened to unprecedented levels?
McCarthy: I am deeply drawn to all these metaphors -- Mandela's, Roosevelt’s, and Mann’s -- to describe our best aspirations and intentions for schools. I want them to be true. But we’re talking about an educational system that is deeply, historically unequal. Horace Mann, of course, was one of the great trailblazers in American education, and his concept of the “common school,” which becomes the modern public school, was revolutionary in the early 19th century. The idea that there should be public schools for all children was radical. Frankly, it still is. But in Mann’s time, despite the fact that slavery had been gradually abolished in the northern states, neighborhoods and schools were still thoroughly segregated. In fact, free Black communities created their own schools to serve their own children because Black children were neither treated equally nor even allowed, in most cases, to attend the common schools. That is one of the reasons why abolitionists, especially Black abolitionists, were so adamant about the dual objectives of the movement: to both eradicate slavery and embrace racial equality. Given this history, to talk about schools, then or now, as “equalizers” is an aspirational claim still not rooted in reality. Schools need to be equitable before they can “equalize.”
Because these aspirational visions for public education have not been realized, the issue of “school choice” is as complicated as it is heated. I mean, why should low-income families and/or families of color be left to languish in under-resourced public schools generation after generation while our leaders bloviate about a vision of public education floating on lofty claims of “democracy,” “equality,” and “opportunity”? Wealthier and whiter parents have always had more choices than low-income and Black and brown parents -- including the choice to send their children to an excellent, well-resourced public school. Low-income folks and families of color, particularly low-income families of color, fully understand the limited choices they have. So, this issue of school choice burns in me. There's no easy answer. One of the dangers of the proliferation of private schools and charter schools is that public schools languish whenever people abandon them in the interest of “choice” or “reform.” But this is also an indictment of the failure of our federal, state, and local governments and their lackluster commitment to making real those ideals we've been talking about. So, we need a radical overhaul of how we think about and fund public education in this country so that what gets left behind -- after all these “choices” and “reforms” -- is both equitable and just. And we need to be clear about the long and deep history of racism that has left public education behind, like the white parents who took their children out of the schools that were being desegregated after Brown v. Board of Education, the white academies that popped up all over the South and other parts of the country in response, and even the “liberal” white parents who have decided the best education for their child is in a private school. And while these important parts of the story of “choice” are deeply problematic, there are also choices that parents make about what’s best for their child that are far less pernicious. The debates we have about schools are always swirling at the intersection of personal choices we make about our own children and larger commitments we have (or don't have) to an educational system that is equitable for all.
Allen: Individually, we see the importance of the highest quality education, but collectively we don't have that universal commitment, the political will to make high-quality education a collective reality. And it is complicated.
McCarthy: The complicated part sometimes gives people permission to avoid the harder part of working for solutions. But if every time things get “complicated,” we run for the hills, we're not doing the work to create a more equitable, free, and just society. Going back to what we started with earlier when we were talking about the role and opportunity for graduate schools of education in this difficult moment, about leaning into the culture wars, we have got to do this work. We cannot turn away from it.
Allen: One final question -- you have said that you encourage your students to think about where they will appear in the index of a history text in the future, to remind them that we all live history. I had the privilege of taking your class, “Queer Nation: LGBTQ Protest, Politics and Policy in the U.S.,” at the end of which you asked us to dream a truly liberated future (and to dream big), and you also asked us what we would be willing to sacrifice to achieve that dream. So, I’m turning that question back to you. What is your liberation dream, and what would you sacrifice to achieve it?
McCarthy: When I exhorted you to do some “liberation dreaming” in that class, I was trying to bring you back to an earlier political orientation from the Stonewall generation, where the rebellions in late June and early July of 1969 produced what was then called gay and lesbian “liberation.” Those queer activists were talking about revolution and power, not “diversity and inclusion.” So, my charge to your class -- which of course was a provocation -- was to imagine yourselves with that kind of an orientation so that you could see what that would look like in the 21st century, where we don't always talk and act in liberatory ways. But one of the things that I, like any provocateur, need to be ready for is when the provocation gets turned back on me. So, I appreciate the invitation! When I dream of liberation, I dream of a world where no one worries about education or health care or housing or food or water or any of those things that Maslow talked about as “basic needs.” But while these are basic needs in the sense that they are foundational, they're also radical commitments to a collective wellbeing. These are human rights. And if we, the people, cannot create a society and sustain a government that is committed, first and foremost, to providing these things for all people, then I think all the other grandiose claims we make about ourselves are false. So when I think about a truly liberated world, I think of all the things that get in the way of being fully free: housing instability, food insecurity, health vulnerability, lack of economic and educational opportunity, poverty, and prejudice. So my liberation dream -- getting all that right -- is obviously a huge project. But at the core of it, frankly, is the redistribution of our collective wealth and resources to eliminate poverty and scarcity, such that everyone has everything they need to take full advantage of the opportunities before them. For me, liberation requires redistribution. We have to reimagine how we share resources and reimagine government's role, as well as our role as individuals, in doing so. And with respect to education, we have to stop funding public schools with property taxes, and we have to eradicate the causal (not correlative) relationship between your zip code and what kind of school you have the opportunity (or not) to attend.
So what do I give up? That, of course, is the harder question. I’m willing to give up ever being rich, I am willing to be taxed much more, and I am willing to forego the kinds of luxuries I might want from time to time. I believe that collective liberation and individual sacrifice are deeply interconnected. Without the latter, we’ll never have the former. Part of the American tradition of “freedom” is libertarian, a highly individualized and at times anti-government orientation, as opposed to a more collective vision of liberation that benefits everyone. The tension between what kind of society we want and what kind of life we want as individuals is nothing new. It’s been there throughout history. But rugged, militant individualism ultimately gets in the way of creating a society where we all may have to sacrifice something so that everyone can have a more free and equal life. That’s why it’s crucial to ask ourselves what we’re willing to sacrifice while we’re also dreaming of and working for a better world. We need to do all these things at once.
About the Author:
Julie Allen is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Senior Fellow. Ms. Allen had a distinguished career in corporate law, focusing on capital markets, public company M&A transactions, and boardroom governance and counsel. Most recently, she was a senior partner at Proskauer Rose. She currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Read Ahead, a reading-based mentoring organization serving NYC public elementary school children, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.