This is the first of two podcast episodes recorded at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Part two will be published on Thursday.
When you walk into the reading room here, it is impossible not to be inspired. Marble busts of America’s founding fathers gaze down into a sunlit room with long wooden tables surrounded by rows of books. It is a place to read, write and think about our nation’s origins. Having opened in 2013, the George Washington Presidential Library now holds “more than 19,000 print and electronic holdings that aid the study of the Washingtons, the colonial and the founding era, and the history of the Mount Vernon estate.”
“The first decade, the goal was to build our foundation as a place where people could come and work on fantastic historical scholarship and then find ways to share it with the public,” says historian Lindsay Chervinsky, the library’s new executive director. “If you look at the explosion of scholarship on the early republic and especially on Washington, a lot of it is attributable to having a place that wants to support that type of work.”
In this episode of History As It Happens, Ms. Chervinsky shares her vision for the institution. “I think there is a broader research contribution we can make beyond research in the 18th century,” she says.
“One of George Washington’s greatest strengths was that he was not afraid of difficult conversations. He surrounded himself by design with people who disagreed with him and each other. He sought out quite contentious conversations so he would have all of the information to be able to make the best-informed decision. And he believed everyone should do that, which is why he liked the idea of a national university,” Ms Chervinksy says.
“The library can serve as a forum in that way for … the D.C. community. We are uniquely blessed with universities, think tanks, intelligence agencies — a very diverse and broad array of knowledge, expertise and worldview. I would love to bring them in to have those difficult conversations about the challenges we’re facing today, informed through history.”
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
