Since we're less than 2 weeks (13 days) from inaugurating Barack Obama, which will be an inspiring moment in history, the following is a list of historians who signed on Nov. 2007 to endorse Obama. I originally posted this Feb. 2008.
Historians for ObamaHere's what they said:
Manan Ahmed, Leslie M. Alexander, Shawn Leigh Alexander, Catherine Allgor, Laura Anker, Joyce Appleby, Ray Arsenault, Andrew Bacevich, Robert Baker, Lewis V. Baldwin, Christopher Bates, Rosalyn Baxandall, Robert L. Beisner, Doron Ben-Atar, Jonathan P. Berkey, William C. Berman, David Blight, Ruth Bloch, Daniel Bluestone, Edward J. Blum, Kevin Boyle, John L. Brooke, Carolyn A. Brown, Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Jodi Campbell, Randolph Campbell, Gregg Cantrell, Charles Capper, Clayborne Carson, Derek Catsam, Herrick Chapman, John Chavez, Lizabeth Cohen, William Cohen, Dennis Cordell, Mary F. Corey, George Cotkin, Edward Countryman, Daniel W. Crofts, Robert Dallek, Adam Davis, David Brion Davis, Jared N. Day, David De Leon, John d'Entremont, Dennis C. Dickerson, Jacob H. Dorn, Bruce Dorsey, David Doyle, Jr., David V. Du Fault, W. Marvin Dulaney, Gretchen Cassel Eick, Carolyn Eisenberg, J. Michael Farmer, Michael Fellman, Antonio Feros, Peter Filene, Kenneth Fones-Wolf, William E. Forbath, Shannon Frystak, Matthew Gabriele, Lloyd Gardner, Sheldon Garon, David Gellman, James Gilbert, Mark T. Gilderhus, Toni Gilpin, Rebecca A. Goetz, David Goldfrank, Warren Goldstein, Linda Gordon, Anthony T. Grafton, Will Gravely, George N. Green, James Green, Sara M. Gregg, Robert Griffith, Michael Grossberg, James Grossman, Carol S. Gruber, Joshua Guild, Roland L. Guyotte, Steven Hahn, David Hall, Kenneth Hamilton, J. William Harris, Paul Harvey, Sam W. Haynes, Nancy A. Hewitt, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Joan Hoff, Jonathan Holloway, Jeffrey Houghtby, Tera W. Hunter, Harold Hyman, Charles F. Irons, Maurice Jackson, Thomas F. Jackson, Lisa Jacobson, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Randal Jelks, John Jentz, Benjamin H. Johnson, David A. Johnson, Robert KC Johnson, Jennifer M. Jones, Patrick D. Jones, Peniel E. Joseph, Michael Katz, Michael Kazin, Barry Keenan, Evelyn Fox Keller, Ari Kelman, Stephen Kern, Richard H. King, Tracy E. K'Meyer, Sarah Knott, Gary Kornblith, Carol Lasser, Melinda Lawson, Steven Lawson, Jackson Lears, Alan Lessoff, James M. Lindgren, Edward T. Linenthal, William A. Link, Leon Litwack, James Livingston, Paul K. Longmore, Ralph E. Luker, J. Fred MacDonald, Chandra Manning, Norman Markowitz, Jill Massino, Kevin Mattson, Jaclyn Maxwell, Martha May, Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Joseph A. McCartin, Robert S. McElvaine, Marjorie McLellan, Sally G. McMillen, James McPherson, Edward D. Melillo, John Merriman, Tony Michels, Christopher Morris, Walter Moss, Todd Moye, Joan Neuberger, Serena L. Newman, Michelle Nickerson, David O'Brien, Leslie S. Offutt, William L. O'Neill, Jeff Pasley, William A. Pencak, Claire Potter, Gyan Prakash, Michael Punke, David Quigley, Stephen G. Rabe, Albert J. Raboteau, Monica A. Rankin, Marci Reaven, Jonathan Rees, Janice Reiff, Steven G. Reinhardt, Kimberly Reiter, Leo Ribuffo, Natalie J. Ring, Jerry Rodnitzky, Ruth Rosen, Peter Rothstein, Edward B. Rugemer, Douglas C. Sackman, Leonard J. Sadosky, Nick Salvatore, Brian Sandberg, John Savage, Martha Saxton, Ellen W. Schrecker, Michael J. Schroeder, Daryl M. Scott, Rachel F. Seidman, Brett L. Shadle, Rebecca Sharpless, James Sidbury, Daniel J. Singal, Manisha Sinha, Harvard Sitkoff, Gene Allen Smith, Daniel Soyer, Paul Spickard, Brian Steele, James Brewer Stewart, Jeffrey Stewart, Mary Stroll, David Thelen, Patricia Tilburg, Jeanne Maddox Toungara, Jeffrey Trask, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Bruce M. Tyler, Kevin Uhalde, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Kara Dixon Vuic, David J. Weber, Barbara Weinstein, Richard Weiss, Kathleen Wellman, Daniel Wickberg, Craig Steven Wilder, Margaret Williams, R. Hal Williams, David W. Wills, Amy Woodson-Boulton, Charters Wynn, Susan Yohn, Eli Zaretsky, Michael Zuckerman
HNN Editor: The list of signers was updated 4-21-08.
We endorse Barack Obama for president because we think he is the candidate best able to address and start to solve these profound problems. As historians, we understand that no single individual, even a president, leads alone or outside a thick web of context. As Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend during the Civil War, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
However, a president can alter the mood of the nation, making changes possible that once seemed improbable. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and kept the nation united; Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Americans to embrace Social Security and more democratic workplaces; John F. Kennedy advanced civil rights and an anti-poverty program.
Barack Obama has the potential to be that kind of president. He has the varied background of a global citizen: his father was African, his stepfather Indonesian, his mother worked in the civil rights movement, and he spent several years of his childhood overseas. As an adult, he has been a community organizer, a law professor, and a successful politician - both at the state and national level. These experiences have given him an acute awareness of the inequalities of race and class, while also equipping him to speak beyond them.
Obama's platform is ambitious, yet sensible. He calls for negotiating the abolition of nuclear weapons, providing universal and affordable health insurance, combatting poverty by adding resources and discouraging destructive habits, investing in renewable energy sources, and engaging with unfriendly nations to ease conflicts that could otherwise lead to war. He takes more forthright stands on these issues than do his major Democratic competitors.
They've really captured his finer qualities here:
But it is his qualities of mind and temperament that really separate Obama from the rest of the pack. He is a gifted writer and orator who speaks forcefully but without animus. Not since John F. Kennedy has a Democrat candidate for president showed the same combination of charisma and thoughtfulness - or provided Americans with a symbolic opportunity to break with a tradition of bigotry older than the nation itself. Like Kennedy, he also inspires young people who see him as a great exception in a political world that seems mired in cynicism and corruption.
