New institute will explore impact of local DC history on wider political milieu

Amid a roomful of local political and education luminaries, Mayor Muriel Bowser and former Mayor Sharon Pratt recently kicked off the Institute of Politics Policy and History (IPPH), a new scholarly endeavor to be housed at the University of the District of Columbia.

The institute, with a mission of “rediscovering District of Columbia history — and its consequential role in determining contemporary politics and policy,” will roll out programs including speakers, symposia, fellowships and internships starting this spring, according to the mayor’s office. Pratt, who served as DC mayor from 1991 to 1995, is leading IPPH as its founding director.

A nonpartisan institute, IPPH is designed to become a “stand-alone, self-sustaining entity by October 2019,” according to a UDC release. Among other resources, the institute will also make use of the DC Archives, which will be stored in a new facility at UDC’s Van Ness campus in the future.

IPPH “will engage students, scholars and speakers in the ongoing process of understanding and helping to shape a resilient, sustainable and equitable future for our city, and doing it as a model for the nation. That is an exciting prospect,” UDC President Ronald Mason said in remarks announcing the partnership between the institute and the university.

Speakers at the Jan. 31 launch ceremony emphasized the importance of fostering scholarship and programs that will be accessible to current Washingtonians and students, as well as future generations.

“The institute will engage a new generation of leaders and prepare them for careers in public service,” Bowser said. “And what’s more, it will showcase the unique history of Washington, DC, [and] establish platforms for making our local history more accessible to those who’ve lived here for generations and those who are learning about our city just now.”

The relevance of DC’s local history to wider historical trajectories of the country was a recurring theme at the launch event.

“We are a unique city in the sense that we are an expression of both the aspirations of America, but also many of the issues that have plagued the country in terms of achieving … that more perfect union,” Pratt said. “And we at this institute want to unearth that history, explore that history, and have that history illuminate our conversations around some of the touchstone issues that challenge our nation today.”

Michael Steele, who will serve as co-chair of the institute’s senior advisory board, noted that DC is “profoundly important … in the history of not just the region … but the nation. No, the world.” Steele, a native Washingtonian, served as lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007 and as chair of the Republican National Committee from 2009 until 2011.

“The stuff that happens here, that comes out of the neighborhoods of Washington, DC — neighborhoods like mine, Petworth, where I grew up — is the stuff not just of the moment, but the stuff that makes the future,” Steele said. “You have members of Congress, United States senators, ambassadors, dignitaries, very important people with long titles living in our neighborhoods, raising their families, having their kids educated by the DC public school system. And yet, that history … is lost on so many people around the world, and especially in our own country, when it comes to what Washington, DC, means to this nation.”

Bowser pointed out that even Washingtonians lose sight of the city’s significance in U.S. history. “Sometimes we fail to remember that we had the first African-American woman to run a big city,” she observed, referencing the historical significance of Pratt’s election. She also praised Pratt as “one of our most outspoken leaders for statehood for Washington, DC, calling on us to be collectively agitated,” but Bowser further exhorted Washingtonians to also “be collectively informed and committed to achieving full representation.”

“Both of these issues — underrepresentation in politics and the need for more people to know the history of our city — [are] why this institute is so important,” Bowser said.

Pratt noted that an institute devoted to elevating the study of local history is not a new concept. “There was, ever since we had home rule, some notion of having an institute here,” she said, recounting that Walter Washington, DC’s first elected mayor under home rule, initially conceived of the idea in consultation with Arrington Dixon, a longtime fixture in local politics who was married to Pratt at the time. Dixon — elected as Ward 4’s first DC Council member in 1974 — was able to bring the plan to fruition during Mayor Marion Barry’s administration after having become council chairman in 1979. “There was an Institute of District Affairs for about a decade here” at UDC, Pratt recalled.

While that institute eventually folded, “there were many permutations of it that tried to evolve since then,” Pratt said. The new incarnation, IPPH, came into being when former council member and prominent educator Charlene Drew Jarvis — now a member of the UDC Board of Trustees — brought the idea to Mason and got his approval. Before long, the proposal gained Bowser’s support as well. “That’s when it took life,” Pratt said.

IPPH is scheduled to begin its speaker series this month, with plans to offer programming on multiple platforms, including via “livestream, social media, podcast and even broadcast television,” according to its website. Upcoming events (dates to be determined) include “A Nation Divided,” exploring the nation’s current deep political divides in comparison to the pre-Civil War era.

The institute is also developing a specialized speaker series that will focus on “the challenges of newly-minted democracies of the world while contrasting the same with the District government of 1973,” according to a UDC release.

As part of the plans to become self-sustaining, IPPH is launching an endowment campaign that is expected to provide operational funding by 2022, and interim fundraising to support programming in the near term, according to the organization.