University of Chicago Presidential Scholar Weighs In on Obama Library

William Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at Chicago Harris and a professor in the Department of Political Science and the College. He has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political institutions, especially the presidency. He is currently working on research projects on Obama’s education initiatives, distributive politics, and the normative foundations of executive power.

Before coming to Chicago Harris, Howell taught in the government department at Harvard University and the political science department at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, he received a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

Are there reasons why the Obama Library would be of particular interest here compared to any other president’s library?

I think it’s the best shot Chicago will have for a while in getting one here. We don’t have one. We’re a major city, and a city with aspirations.

And the racial dynamics involved shouldn’t be ignored. It isn’t just that he’s a president who launched his career here; he is the first African-American president, who launched his career on the south side of Chicago. A really powerful dimension of the argument has to do with the persisting salience of race in American politics and American life. While part of this is about the legacy of Obama’s administration, and things that he accomplished, it’s also a testament to historical trends having to do with race that go a lot farther back than Obama.

So much of what we create these days, and leave behind, is digital. Is there still academic value in a centralized archive?

Yes. First as a gathering place for people to talk about the kinds of issues Obama cares about. And while a lot is collected digitally, there’s still a lot that isn’t and it’s got to be housed someplace. Then there’s also something about the physicality of seeing the gifts that were given to him, the actual law that he signed, the pen that he used—seeing the imagery blown up in dramatic fashion that defined his presidency. It can have a real effect on tourists and interested citizens.

Do you feel there is value as tourists or members of the public visit, in their consciousness being raised about how power dynamics work in the executive?

Yes. The President is the single most recognized figure in American politics, and with cause: policy initiatives and the implementation of policy emanates in really important ways from decisions that he, someday she, makes. We as citizens ought to know what the President’s up to.

Even if it’s after the fact?

Even if it’s after the fact. Because we continue to live with it. The policies that Obama advances are going to outlive him, just as when he stepped into office he inherited a governing apparatus and a set of policies that was the handiwork of his predecessors.

How much of your own research on American government has been informed by archives like presidential libraries?

It has not been a feature of my own research, but I have benefited mightily from the work of others who deeply engage the archives. There are questions you can ask and answer using archival research that you can’t readily get a handle on looking at publicly available data.

One [reason archives are important] is you’re interested in historical decisions that were made and the thinking behind individual decisions. It’s about understanding what a president did, and why he did the specific things that he did.

But there’s another way archives are potentially really important and interesting. And that has to do with foundational questions about power and influence. That’s a particularly difficult subject to get a handle on in a system of separated powers, where you’ve got lots of political actors trying to affect a policy outcome. Trying to discern the unique imprint of each of those political actors — not just working to affect policy, but to undermine or advance the interests of each other — is really hard to do. By getting into the archives you can see things like memos written by key players who were openly worrying about how other political actors would respond if a particular move was made. You can get a handle on the strategies being exercised by different players in order to try to affect policy.

If the Obama Library lands here, does University faculty recruitment become easier, or are there pedagogical benefits for students?

Well there may be, in the same way that there are pedagogical benefits from having the Institute of Politics here. A library can bring big-name people, world leaders, onto campus that allow for opportunities for students and faculty to interact with them.

Libraries can mean lots of different things though. I think a lot of this will depend on the kind of library that Obama wants to have. He could have a weaker or stronger relationship with not just the University, but with the intellectual communities that define the University. He may choose to value scholarship and be willing to have historians and social scientists come through and deeply engage the archive and use this as a forum to deeply engage each other. He may also want to be outward looking, and to think about the relationship between the library and the larger community. And he may have his own policy objectives that reside outside the intellectual demands of a university. So, we’ll see what kind of library he wants to build.

Feature Photo: cc/(wikipedia)