Transparency is Key

Exploring the Challenges of Writing Our Institutions’ Histories

“May our dim and longing vision then be blessed with light, more light.” – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Let the Light Enter,” Poems (1871)

For those of us new to this “hard histories” work, the Hard Histories at Hopkins webinar series has been valuable for gaining insights into the complexities of historical research, the importance of accuracy and credibility, and the need for transparency. There were many things to learn from the April 27, 2023 webinar “Writing about Hard Histories in Baltimore”, which featured Dr. Andrew Jewett and Dr. Kenneth Lipartito. Our readers learned last week from Emma Petite about these authors’ research on both the individuals and the institutional bequests of Johns Hopkins and John McDonogh. I was particularly fascinated with our guests’ discussion about the practicalities of publicly tackling institutional histories.

One of the key takeaways from this webinar, I thought, was about the importance of communicating and making research accessible to stakeholders. Both Dr. Jewett and Dr. Lipartito, working for educational institutions, noted their various audiences including faculty, staff, students, administrators, and alumni, all of whom have specific perspectives that must be acknowledged. They highlighted that when working with multiple audiences, communicating about the research and the writing itself is a lengthy process that depends upon credibility as well as factual accuracy.

Gilman Hall, John Hopkins University Homewood Campus, 1922 (Courtesy of Johns Hopkins Universities Libraries)

Institutional history can involve the difficult material involving racism, segregation, and other polarizing events or themes that can be still very much a part of local experience in the present. To remain credible in the eyes of stakeholders and the general public, Dr. Lipartito explained, institutions have an important role to play in addressing such hard and polarizing histories, and then fighting present-day battles. In his words, “Once the institution realize[s] that telling the truth factually with professional, deep historical research is of great value to them…it allows for the project to succeed.” When an institution is seen as credible, it encourages authentic engagement from stakeholders, which in turn acts to safeguard the accuracy of the research. Transparency and communication, Dr. Jewett added, allows the institution to develop a new relationship with its own history.

Both authors addressed the need to balance the changing structure of institutions—both practically and ideologically—in their writing. In the case of Dr. Jewett’s work on Johns Hopkins University, this means examining the development of Johns Hopkins as a leading research university while also keeping in mind the shifting, yet persistent, forms of inequality that the institution has helped to reinforce. Knitting all of this sometimes-contradictory information into a cohesive narrative of the institution, we learned, can be difficult.

Kamal Kaur in the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archive (Courtesy of Will Kirk)

I saw all of these challenges emerge in my own research on the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum (JHH COA) in the Hard Histories Spring 2023 Research Lab. I was especially struck by how, as the structure of the Johns Hopkins institution evolved, the existence of the JHH COA was remembered and then also forgotten. With my research into the individual lives and stories of children who resided in the JHH COA, I hope that recovering and sharing their names will help to give them back a voice and identity that had been erased or obscured.

Communication and transparency became principles connected to my own research. Publicizing the stories of girls resident in the asylum helps us to understand and preserve historical knowledge about this institution and its role in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century Baltimore community. It also makes it imperative that today Johns Hopkins, the institution, properly recognize the JHH COA. By doing so, not only can the university become a more transparent and accountable research institution; it can also reckon with its past and see the value of history to the future of Johns Hopkins.

As a “hard histories” researcher myself, I am glad to be able to learn from expert practitioners like Dr. Jewett and Dr. Lipartito about why it is so important to acknowledge and address difficult topics such as racism and inequality in institutional histories. I’ve learned that it is necessary to help our readers and listeners understand the complexity of historical research. This webinar discussion drove home the role that accuracy, credibility, and transparency all play in our communications with various stakeholders.

We invite you to continue following along as we share our final research projects in the next series of Hard Histories Substack posts—stay tuned in the coming weeks and be sure to subscribe!

Kamal Kaur, KSAS BA ‘25

Emma Katherine Bilski, Editor