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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

From PhD to Public Advocate: My Path

By Yael Schacher

(via Pexels)

In my first year on the job market in the fall of 2015, with a fresh PhD in American Studies from Harvard, I did not get an interview for a job at another university where I had been teaching as an adjunct (and getting stellar evaluations) for three years.  This kind of rejection is not unusual, of course, but it was a wake-up call for me. It prompted me to take several steps which, in retrospect, seem more connected and directed than they did at the time. All of them led toward the job I began in January 2019 as a senior advocate at a refugee policy NGO in Washington, DC., where I am focusing on US asylum policy and immigration issues with humanitarian protection implications.

Refugees International, the NGO where Dr. Schacher works (via Refugees International)

First, I sought out meaningful projects and other institutional homes. Although I continued to teach one course a term at the university that had passed me over, I accepted a lectureship at a different kind of school: a liberal arts college where the teaching and institutional culture was quite different. One of my graduate school advisors suggested that I join a public policy research team led by a colleague at the Harvard Kennedy School. I got paid to do very interesting historical research (related to, but not precisely in, my field of immigration history) and also learned how to collaborate on a policy driven project. Another one of my graduate school mentors, a professor at the Harvard Law School, invited me to give a guest lecture in one of her classes.

Second, I decided to get more involved in advocacy, as I felt I had less to lose and a great deal to give. I ran and was elected to serve on the executive committee of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) at the university where I had been teaching and focused my attention on two issues:  the treatment of adjunct faculty and undocumented students.  I also began volunteering one day each week at the legal services office of an immigrant aid organization near my home. I had studied and taught the history of immigration and refugee policy; now I was helping migrants apply for asylum and adjust their status. I went to immigration court with a young boy from Honduras who had crossed the border on his own and was placed with family members all the way in Connecticut. I helped numerous women apply for relief under the Violence Against Women’s Act and as victims of trafficking. The work at the immigration organization was gratifying, especially the conversations about immigration policy and casework that I had with social workers and attorneys there.  It was especially rewarding to do this work in the wake of the presidential election in the fall of 2016, when I felt a bit less helpless than some of my fellow academics. I had an outlet to at least try to make a difference in the lives of people who would be most affected by the new administration’s policies.

Still, I had not given up the hope of getting a professorship or of publishing my dissertation as a book. Throughout the fall of 2016, I applied for jobs and postdocs. I paid my way to go to the annual meeting of the American Historical Association for a preliminary interview that did not lead to a campus interview. I also had a skype interview that did lead to a campus interview at a liberal arts college in the early spring—but no job offer. When I learned that I had received a postdoctoral fellowship at UT’s Institute for Historical Studies, I was thrilled, but also unsure if I should take it because it would mean spending so much time away from my school-age children and partner (who could not move across the country for just a year). My partner was supportive and so I went off to Texas in the fall of 2017 (returning home for one or two long weekends each month and all breaks).

Poster for the AHA’s annual meeting in 2016 (via AHA)

At first, being at UT made me all the more determined to find a way to stay in academia. I was treated as a scholar, given time and resources to write and research, and was surrounded by graduate students, postdocs, and professors doing amazing projects.  But, so much was going on in contemporary immigration policy—and on the very issue, asylum-seeking, to which I had devoted a decade of study — that I sought out colleagues at the law school and at an immigrant aid organization in Austin to continue working in advocacy. I resented the tremendous amount of time and energy I had to spend, yet again, on job applications—rather than writing my book—and the travel and preparation for interviews and job talks that did not lead to job offers.

In the winter of 2018, I had back to back experiences that most directly led me to where I am now. First, I traveled overseas for an interview and job talk. I realized there that, even if I were to get the job, moving would be a tremendous hardship for my family and I would have little opportunity to do research in US-based archives. Then, when I returned to Texas, I went with the UT law school’s immigration clinic to the Karnes detention center to help women asylum-seekers prepare for their credible fear interviews. I knew then: given the contemporary academic and policy landscape, advocacy was much more appealing to me than academia.

In the spring of 2018, my mentor at the Harvard Law School asked me if I would join her and some colleagues to write a history of the contemporary American asylum system (essentially, picking up where my dissertation left off). I presented a conference paper on asylum advocacy in the 1980s—focusing especially on how contemporary litigation was replaying some of that decade’s battles. Returning to Connecticut, I continued volunteering at the immigrant aid organization, seeing first-hand how new policies influenced casework. When, in June, I saw the advertisement for the job at the refugee policy NGO, I jumped at the chance to apply. This was at the same time that the administration’s family separation policy was in the headlines and  I felt an urgency to use what I knew about the past to influence the present.

Pragmatically, I knew I had appropriate writing samples and strong references. When I got the interview, I reached out to academics who had shifted to working at think-tanks and non-profits and they helped me prepare effectively. I was an unconventional candidate for the job—the others had degrees in law or public policy. But I had deep knowledge,  a broad network, and evidence of commitment. This was a newly created position for the organization; contemporary policies and events were leading it to focus on asylum policy in the US in a way it had not done before. We made a great match.

Like other historians of immigration, I frequently point to past “crises,” debates, and policies that resonate with those of today.  That the present seems so similar to—if not worse than—the past, can lend itself to a cynical throwing up of the hands: the more things change, the more things stay the same; history is cyclical and progress a myth. My new job forces me to do something more: to use what I know about patterns and dynamics in the past, particularly about the dialectic between advocates and officials, to figure out what could effectively push policy in a better direction. I am excited to use my analytical and writing skills in my new job. But I also have to learn to write a bit differently. The historian me tends to try to learn everything I can about a given topic, figure out who wields power and how institutions work in a time and place, and, tentatively, interpret and criticize assumptions and methods. In my new job, instead of starting with a context, I start with a goal–and write about why and how we need to get there.  To do this, I will combine the analytical skills I sharpened in my research on asylum with the concrete approach I developed while engaged in direct legal representation of asylum seekers. This pragmatism is new to me, but also feels right, especially right now.

You May Also Like:

My Alternative PhD in History
History Museums: Race, Eugenics, and Immigration in New York History Museums
Violent Policing on the Texas Border

Also by Yael Schacher:

A View from the Bridge (Directed by Sidney Lumet, 1962)

 

My Alternative PhD in History

By Ben Weiss

A recent piece in The Economist claims that, “One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.”

startup-photos

(via Pexels)

When I was considering enrolling in the University of Texas History PhD program, I heard similar sentiments from peers and discovered many analogous articles. Despite the deluge of criticism I found myself wading through during application season, stubbornness and ambition persevered, and I entered the program in August of 2013. I decided to get a PhD in History as training for pursuing a career in government policy making. Many people making policy decisions lack significant contextual knowledge about their fields, which has a negative impact on overall policy effectiveness. Nearly three and a half years later and having experienced many of the drawbacks associated with grad school, I am still content with my decision.

During my undergraduate years at UT, I took a course with the highly regarded historian Tony Hopkins. Though I often find myself remembering his stirring lectures and exceptional oration skills, one moment in the course especially resonated with my ambitions. One day, he mournfully stated that the last of the generation of economists who were well versed in history recently retired or passed away. His words deeply echoed my feelings about the profound lack of historical and cultural understanding among the vast majority of contemporary policymakers.

A._G._Hopkins,_Cambridge_2013.jpeg

The distinguished economic historian A.G. “Tony” Hopkins taught at UT from 2002-2013 (via Wikimedia Commons).

I work on the history of sexual health politics during the colonial period in southern Africa with the goal of doing policy work for American HIV/AIDS relief efforts in the same areas. Historically, western medicine frequently has produced traumatic and violent experiences in African societies, where perspectives on sexual health and sexual education norms differ from western views and health relief campaigns have a history of becoming politicized within neo-colonial and nationalist power struggles, making American foreign health policy and its reception in Africa problematic. Many policymakers lack the historical background necessary to develop effective policy. For all the discourse on indigenous partnership that occurs as a part of American relief efforts in my focus regions, partnership occurs within the cultural and ideological framework of American public policy. For example, policymakers do not legitimately account for indigenous healing practices within their policy frameworks – either in discourse or practice – because the vast majority of policymakers fail to recognize just how much sociocultural value local medical practices hold while simultaneously overlooking the ways in which Western medicine possesses its own country specific cultural values. Americans have contributed to the tremendous progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, but we could be doing better by integrating real historical training.

I have made this argument multiple times to potential employers as I look beyond my dissertation defense toward a career in policy making. My contentions have not fallen on deaf ears. Think tanks and other policy research institutes have indicated that my historical training really does bring valuable expertise to the table that few other candidates with other types of degrees possess.

030926-F-2828D-307 Washington, D.C. (Sept. 26, 2003) -- Aerial view of the Washington Monument with the Capitol in the background. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway. (RELEASED)

Historical knowledge and training can inform policy from the local to the federal levels (via Wikimedia Commons).

When considering whether a PhD – and specifically one in History – is worth it, I would consider asking what such a degree can add both to one’s personal goals and to making one competitive on the professional job market. When I was thinking about graduate school, I reflected on Tony Hopkins’ words and realized that I could not, in good conscience, work in HIV/AIDS relief (something I have been passionate about for close to a decade) without acquiring the knowledge that was lacking in the field. I also believed that a PhD would enhance my employment prospects if I articulated the validity of my trajectory in the right way.

There is a tangible void in public policy and I firmly believe that history PhDs could have a critical role to play in filling that void in the coming years. To those who are skeptical of the decision to put so much time, money, and energy into a PhD education, I contend that the versatile PhD holds more weight now than at any other time in recent memory.
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More by Ben Weiss on Not Even Past:

Slavoj Žižek and Violence.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert C. Allen (2009).

You may also like:
Selling ourselves short? PhDs Inside the Academy and Outside of the Professoriate.
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