"My PhD dissertation and first book were about the proslavery argument. You might say I wanted to understand inhumanity—how men and women throughout history have persuaded themselves to defend ideas, practices, societies, governments that we of a different era see as indefensible. I wanted to know how humans can become blind to evil. Perhaps if we could understand their processes of denial and rationalization we might gain insight into our own failures of vision, the shortcomings of our own time. History, in other words, can expand our awareness of ourselves. It releases us from the confines of our own individual lives; it offers us other ways of seeing that cast our assumptions into relief. It reminds us of choices people have made—or not made—and thus illuminates realms of possibility. It shows us that things have been otherwise and reminds us they can be different once again. By documenting contingency and agency, history undermines any acceptance of crippling inevitability. And contingency means opportunity. It means that we can change things and that what we do matters. To my mind this may be history’s most important lesson."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Non-fiction authors from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesPeople from New York CityWomen academics from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Remarks upon receiving the Kluge Prize, Harvard University History of the Presidency, Drew Gilpin Faust (12 September 2018)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Drew_Gilpin_Faust
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Drew Gilpin Faust
8 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Drew Gilpin Faust →
Related Quotes
"Technology has the potential to positively transform access to education, and to shape how teachers teach and student…"
"Tomorrow, we will continue to be called upon to build trust in our actions, our words, and our purposes, to do good i…"
"As you leave UM to take up your work as nurses, engineers, teachers, scholars, scientific researchers, writers, careg…"
"The story of Virginia compels us to recognize how important it is that we open our eyes and actively resist the assum…"
"I am not the woman president of Harvard. I am the president of Harvard."
"I believe that affirmative action has changed the shape of and the landscape of higher education in a way that we nee…"
"On banning Harvard’s single-gender clubs..: Starting with the class of 2021, any student who belongs to one of these …"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge …"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on …"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libat…"