Publication Date

January 14, 2025

Perspectives Section

From the President

AHA Topic

Professional Life

Geographic

  • Latin America/Caribbean

Thematic

Cultural, Migration, Immigration, & Diaspora

Among the interactions that I have deeply valued and treasured most over the years have been the conversations I’ve had with our professional colleagues. The topics we’ve discussed together, combined with the insights and perspectives we’ve gleaned, have been a source of endless inspiration, motivation, and energy. Indeed, I believe that our ability to convene and converse has long been a distinguishing hallmark of the AHA. From the Association’s founding in 1884, the true spirit of our organization has perhaps been best manifested in the consistent sharing of experiences, knowledge, and camaraderie at annual meetings and other events, in publications including the American Historical Review and Perspectives on History, and the countless other activities the AHA offers.

As I reflected upon the nature of the columns that I would write during my tenure as president, I found it fitting to conceive of the column’s format as an ongoing “conversation.” Across 2025, my column will pursue this approach by engaging in dialogue with historians on key topics that we face. How is the discipline changing, and what are our grand challenges? What stands out as the most interesting aspects of our field and subfields? What is the role of technology in our discipline? How do we conduct research effectively today? How do we teach history? How do we articulate our value and utility amid the challenges confronting higher education and the humanities?

I will seek to explore these, and related questions, by speaking with several of you—across fields, professions, and career stages. I’m excited about what this format may yield. I invite you to embark with me on this journey in the Perspectives issues to come, as we engage in an extended conversation about history.

To begin this dialogue, Laura Ansley, the AHA’s senior managing editor, interviewed me about my career, my goals for my presidential term, and what I’ve been reading.

 

Looking for a Narrative Arc: Meet Ben Vinson III

Ben Vinson III, president of Howard University and historian of Latin America, takes on a second presidency when he accepts the AHA gavel on January 5, 2025.

Ben Vinson III speaks from a lectern, wearing blue and white academic regalia.

AHA president Ben Vinson III has described himself as a “living Diasporan.” Office of University Communications, Howard University

A scholar of the African diaspora, Vinson earned his PhD from Columbia University. While he currently resides in Washington, DC, and was born in South Dakota, his childhood experiences living on military bases in Italy and his studies in South America have shaped his approaches to both the study of the past and service as a leader. Vinson has served on the AHA Council previously as vice president of the Research Division (2021–24).

Vinson’s research focuses on the development of race in Latin America. His book Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017) won the Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History from the Latin American Studies Association. His latest book project is about the jazz musician Frank Etheridge.

Nearly 20 years in higher education administration gives Vinson a unique viewpoint on the historical discipline. Before joining Howard University in 2023, he was provost and executive vice president of Case Western Reserve University, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, and a vice-dean of interdisciplinary programs and graduate education at Johns Hopkins University. In combination with his faculty positions at Barnard College, Penn State University, Hopkins, and GW, Vinson’s experiences have laid the foundation for his presidency at one of the nation’s leading private historically Black universities.

How did you first become interested in history?

I first became interested in history through my mom, who was an elementary school teacher. When I was growing up, she used to make sure that when I went to school every day, I knew the significance of the day, what it meant, and what happened in history. That’s something that never left me. I was always curious about what happened in the past to get us where we are, and that gave me an extra perspective on the times we were in. I found that very meaningful.

Because of my dad’s military career, I also grew up partly in Vicenza, Italy, where I was surrounded by history. Castles, battlefields—every building seemed to be far more than a building, in that it was really a window into the past, living in the present.

So, when I think about why I loved history and why it became my favorite subject in school, it’s those deep ties and my upbringing. Inspired by my mom, I would always lean toward reading biographies. As a kid, some of the first big books that I read on my own were the histories of the lives of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Julius Caesar. Those three individuals and their lives made a deep impression upon me as a child. It was all history from there, as they say.

You have called yourself a “living Diasporan,” after a childhood spent living abroad on military bases. How did those experiences influence your scholarly trajectory?

It inspired my passion for history—being in and living in Italy but also growing up Black in Europe, especially in the 1970s, coming right on the heels of the civil rights movement. As a Black child in a foreign, largely white society, there are a lot of questions that you have about differences, and you learn a lot about how you and your family are being treated. We seemed always welcomed in Europe. In our small town, Sovizzo, we were the only Blacks around. I was struck when we came back to the United States over the summers, and my aunt would whisper to me, “You know, we don’t talk to those individuals, we have to be careful, don’t ask to play with those children.” I remember being puzzled; why do we have to be careful? Understanding race on two continents through traveling from one to the other and being raised in one and connected in the Deep South—it raised questions about race, race relations, and identity that have lingered with me. So it was all formed by those early experiences about what it was like to be Black living in Europe and juxtaposed against the United States.

What first interested you in the African diaspora and Latin America?

What first interested me was one of my professors during my undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College. I’ll never forget Professor Raúl Bueno Chávez, who was from Peru. I took Spanish language skills as an undergraduate student, and he inspired me to keep up my Spanish by traveling to Latin America. It helped that he had ties in Venezuela. I applied for a Dartmouth research grant that allowed me to do research on the Afro-Venezuelan religious festival for Saint John the Baptist in the region of Barlovento. And so really, it was traveling to Venezuela and understanding the arc of history of people of African descent in Latin America, outside of the United States, and seeing the concentration of people of African descent and how they transformed their society. This made me so curious that I just couldn’t stop wanting to know more, and it was so different than anything I had ever seen. Beyond anything I’d seen in the United States, anything that I’d seen in Europe. That was the catalyst. It was the early research projects on Venezuela that inspired me to think about the African diaspora and consider it as a field of study.

How does your scholarship influence your administrative work?

As a historian, you learn certain critical skills. You learn a lot about using a variety of sources to pull together a narrative. You become a real listener and a deep observer of people. Those are skills that are extremely useful as an administrator. Because historians use an incredibly broad set of evidence to make decisions and to think about the world, and to think about their environment, I look for inputs everywhere, as I think about administrative decisions. I pay a lot of attention to the histories of certain constituencies, units, and organizations while pondering how to arrive at more effective ways to shape an institution. I also think about how historians craft and deploy narrative—you have to make sense out of what might be construed by others as disparate and unintelligible. You appreciate ambiguity. You look for a narrative arc to tell a story based on evidence that can make sense to a variety of audiences. You condense information in intelligible ways to prompt understanding and action. These are some of the calling cards of historians and also help make very complex institutions make sense to the various stakeholders and audiences of the institution. Therefore, I use my historian’s craft every single day.

Increasing diversity in higher education has been a through line of your work at multiple universities. How does that experience influence your AHA work?

We live in a diverse world. It is important for us to remember that plurality really enhances institutions, and it has the potential to enhance society. In thinking about my work in the AHA, it’s making sure we have forums that allow for those multiple voices to breathe. We want to ensure there is opportunity to provide their contributions so that we can be a fully productive field. That’s really the essence of it.

What goals do you have for your term as AHA president?

Well, first of all, I want to represent our constituency to the best of my ability. I want to make sure that I am helping advocate for the role and value of history, and that I am facilitating our constituency’s voice amid other fields in higher education. I also believe that in my role, both as a historian and as a university administrator, I’ll be able to bring those insights into our professional organization.

I hope to help bridge the divides that some see between administration and faculty. And I want to leverage my experiences to the benefit of our organization and help bring more light to our members and their efforts to address the big questions that we as historians are trying to answer for the benefit of society.

Finally, what can’t you get enough of? Any books, hobbies, or other pop culture that you’re turning to right now?

I can’t get enough of biographies, and I’ve been rereading certain books. David Blight’s history about Frederick Douglass, for instance, is a monumental masterpiece. I’ve also been working through the new biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Jonathan Eig. I’m looking forward to reading Coretta Scott King’s autobiography, which I hear is a page-turner. But I confess that I also indulge some more popular books. I have been reading Walter Isaacson’s book on Elon Musk. I have been working through the memoirs of Prince Harry and Paris Hilton, as well as an intriguing book called Red Helicopter about leadership and the turnaround of the Ashley Stewart clothing company. I have always enjoyed learning about the lives of others, because there is so much to learn about making one’s own life more meaningful and fulfilling, while also learning from the mistakes of others. I find biography and autobiography to be one of the most reflective forms of narrative that tap into the soul of the human experience.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Ben Vinson III
Ben Vinson III

Howard University

Laura Ansley
Laura Ansley

American Historical Association