Historian of the United States House of Representatives
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The Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives is an official appointed by that legislative body to study and document its past. The current Historian is Robert V. Remini, appointed on April 28, 2005.
The post was created in 1983 and its first holder was University of Maryland, College Park historian Ray Smock. In a move that was seen by many as politically motivated, Smock was fired by House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995 when the Republican Party took control of the House.
Gingrich appointed Christina Jeffrey, a political scientist from Kennesaw State University, to the post in January 1995. However, a controversy arose over comments Jeffrey had made in 1986, while evaluating a program called Facing History and Ourselves[1] for the US Department of Education. She wrote "The program gives no evidence of balance or objectivity. The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view and is not presented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan." Democrats and Jewish groups expressed outrage at the comments, but Jeffrey stated that the allegations against her were "slanderous and outrageous." Nonetheless, Gingrich dismissed Jeffrey a few days after she took up the post. After meeting with her several months after her dismissal, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham H. Foxman, wrote that the ADL was "satisfied that any characterization of you as anti-Semitic or sympathetic to Nazism is entirely unfounded and unfair."[2]
The post was vacant for the next decade until House Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed Remini, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of numerous works on President Andrew Jackson, in 2005. Shortly after his appointment, Remini hired fellow UIC Professor Fred Beuttler as Deputy Historian of the House.
- ^ Facing History and Ourselves
- ^ Abraham H. Foxman, National Director (1995-08-22). "letter to Christina Jeffrey". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved on 2006-12-02.