Two weeks before Election Day, Rice University’s School of Humanities hosted a discussion on the historical context and stakes of the upcoming presidential election. The Oct. 22 event “Historical Perspectives on the 2024 Presidential Election” brought together Rice historians Douglas Brinkley and Caleb McDaniel to explore parallels between past and present. The event was co-sponsored by The Progressive Forum of Houston.
Brinkley, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Professor of Humanities and a nationally recognized presidential historian, spoke about the significance of the 2024 election, calling it “very likely the most significant election of certainly my life.” He underscored the value of historical perspective, highlighting pivotal elections such as 1800’s, which established the two-party system, and 1860’s, which reshaped the nation at the forefront of the U.S. Civil War.
McDaniel, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History, pointed to the elections of 1860 and 1864.
“It’s pretty unprecedented for a nation to hold a presidential election in the midst of a civil war,” McDaniel said, also addressing the weight of historical context, noting that some elections gain importance only in hindsight. “The 2000 election ranks up there for me in my lifetime, partly because Sept. 11 that followed and all of the consequences of that contested election.”
The discussion, part of Rice’s Humanities Innovations series, aimed to illustrate the enduring relevance of history to today’s political landscape. Kathleen Canning, dean of the School of Humanities and one of the event’s moderators, emphasized that historians do not predict the future but use their deep knowledge of the past to “analyze and interpret the present.”
“We all know that there are perils to forgetting history,” Canning said.
The conversation also delved into current challenges facing American democracy.
“We’re not teaching civics in schools,” Brinkley said. “We’re not teaching about what it means to be an American.”
Brinkley and McDaniel dug into the history of voter turnout from the high participation rates of the 1840 election to today’s more complicated registration systems. McDaniel said that while voter turnout is a positive sign of democracy, there has always been “a sort of love-hate relationship with voter turnout in our society.”
Moderators Canning and Fay Yarbrough, professor of history and associate dean of humanities, guided the discussion to contemporary concerns. Yarbrough directed audience questions about the role of social media and its impact on voter engagement and polarization.
“I do think social media is changing our politics, our culture and our society in ways that it will take another panel of historians to fully unpack and analyze,” McDaniel said.
Examining how lessons from America’s past can inform voters as they prepare to cast their ballots in an election that, for many, feels like a turning point, Brinkley had a clear message: “Our country is going to have to survive. However you vote, the main thing is to get out there and vote.”