Doing History in Polarized Times - Day 1 / Session 1 - Framing the Problem: American Understandings of History

Johann Neem is a historian who studies early American history and education. His writings have appeared in such venues as the Hedgehog Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, USA Today, and the Washington Post. He is author of the books What’s the Point of College? and Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education. With Joanne B. Freeman, he edited the essay collection Jeffersonians in Power (2019). Neem is currently co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.

Dan Vallone is a national expert and authority on polarization and social cohesion in America. Dan has led some of the most high-profile public-opinion studies of polarization and worked with stakeholders across the political spectrum on efforts to manage the risks and challenges of polarization. Dan regularly speaks about the ways to address polarization and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, C-SPAN, Boston Globe, CNN, Financial Times, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, the Undivided Attention podcast, and a range of other media outlets.

Dan brings a unique set of experiences to his work on polarization and social cohesion. He has has worked in politics at the national, state, and local level; he is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan; and he has led large-scale research and strategic communications initiatives on a range of issues.

Dan graduated from West Point, served six years as an infantry officer, and has an MBA from Harvard and a MA in Contemporary China from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Susie Wilkening (she/her) has over 25 years of experience in museums, including nearly 20 years leading custom projects for museums as well as fielding groundbreaking national research on the role of museums in American society. She is the primary researcher for the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers (in partnership with AAM), and shares her work at museum conferences, with the media, and with the museum field at the Data Stories page of wilkeningconsulting.com.

Modupe Labode is a curator of African American Social Justice History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She taught history and museum studies at IUPUI, where she was also a public scholar of African American History and Museums. Previously, she was the chief historian at the Colorado Historical Society (History Colorado). Labode's areas of interest include histories of monuments and commemoration; Black public art; African American history of the Midwest and West; and public interpretations of Black history at museums and public history sites.