The Revival of Political History

The National Fellowship, as it was aptly named, was launched in 2000 in Charlottesville, Virginia, home to the state’s flagship university. From the outset, however, the Fellowship was national in scope, supporting talented Ph.D. students at some of the world’s top universities, not just at UVA, and pairing them with renowned senior scholars. These senior scholars, affectionately referred to as “dream mentors,” would be handpicked by the Fellows and would play an integral role in reviewing and providing feedback to their research.

 According to Balogh the program was designed to create a network of historians, political scientists, and sociologists who sought to understand politics from an historical perspective. It also defined politics capaciously, drawing upon the energy and stature of fields like legal history and environmental history, as well as some of the very subdisciplines like urban history, Black history, and the history of gender that had initially led to all that handwringing by political historians.

 Tom Sugrue, a professor at New York University who specializes in 20th-century American politics, urban history, civil rights, and race, was one of the first dream mentors to be selected and, in fact, holds the record for having been selected four times in the last 20 years. Sugrue has authored, co-authored, or edited 10 books, racking in a slew of awards, including the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Philip Taft Prize in Labor History, and the President's Book Award of the Social Science History Association, among others. His body of work includes more than 60 articles in top academic journals and spans three decades, making him an ideal advisor for a rising scholar.

Collectively, the National Fellowship community has published hundreds of books with major presses, many of which have garnered major awards, including, most recently, National Fellow alumna Beverly Gage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. They also regularly place op-eds related to their research in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and leading digital media.

 Margaret O’Mara, who received a National Fellowship in 2002 while pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, worked in the Clinton White House prior to graduate school and served as a contributing researcher at the Brookings Institution.

 “When I entered academia, I was so impressed by the research around me, but I couldn’t help noticing a disconnect between those studying the profession and those practicing it,” she said. “The National Fellowship Program created a bridge between policy makers and those who study it.”

Today, O’Mara teaches about the growth of high-tech economy, the history of U.S. politics, and the connections between the two at the University of Washington and is a past contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. She credits the training she received as a National Fellow for much of her success.

 One of the unique features of the Fellowship is the fact that Fellows and their dream mentors convene in Charlottesville for two academic conferences, where they workshop book manuscripts, participate in panel discussions with leading scholars in the field, present academic talks, and take part in various targeted training sessions.

 One such training session is led by Jon Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who also happens to be a prolific op-ed writer, often publishing as many as three in one week. For years, Zimmerman has led a clinic at the spring conference to teach Fellows how to write successful op-eds.