Civics in the Classroom: Lindsay Chervinsky

This is Civics in the Classroom, a podcast series from the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Civics in the Classroom is part of the A250 Summer Teacher Seminar, America's First Principles. This program to promote innovative K-12 instruction in U.S. history and civics was designed by the Center for Presidential History with support from the U.S. Department of Education and in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In the first year of this three-year project, our workshops and lectures will focus on the causes and context of the movement for U.S. independence and the production and legacy of its most famous document, the Declaration of Independence.  

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinksy. Lindsay is a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. She's the author of the award-winning book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution and Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms., The Daily Beast, the Bulwark, Time, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post. She’s also a former CPH postdoctoral fellow! We talked about her work at Mount Vernon, why civics education matters, and how some memorable teachers shaped her career as a historian. 

The music for this series comes from the album K2 by Blue Dot Sessions under an Attribution-NonCommercial License. 

Transcript

LINDSAY CHERVINSKY: “If citizens don't think the system works, they have no reason to wish to continue it. And so it's essential for our citizens to understand how the system was formed, who is responsible for what, so they can ask the appropriate people for the right things and hold the correct people for bad actions.”

 SUSIE PENMAN: This is Civics in the Classroom, a podcast series from the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I’m Susie Penman, assistant director at SMU’s Center for Presidential History. This episode features a conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinksy. Lindsay is a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. She's the author of the award-winning book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution and Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms., The Daily Beast, the Bulwark, Time, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post. She’s also a former CPH postdoctoral fellow. We talked about her work at Mount Vernon, why civics education matters, and how some memorable teachers shaped her career as a historian. Lindsay, thank you so much for talking with us today.

LINDSAY CHERVINSKY: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

PENMAN: So I wanted to ask you, a big part of what you do involves engaging with public audiences. You have a Substack, you're a skilled public speaker, and as I just noted, you've written for this wide variety of publications. So can you talk about why that sort of outreach is important to you as a historian?

CHERVINSKY: Yeah. I think that my, I’m motivated in a couple of different ways. One, I think my strength has always been speaking to a public audience, so it's a little bit of a push-pull situation that I felt like I was better suited to that than crafting, for example, a syllabus for a semester-long class. Those are actually really different skills, and mine is much better suited towards the public audience. The second reason is, especially in this moment, I think a lot of people need to be told quite explicitly why they should care about the history, why it matters, why – in my case, my day job is talking about George Washington and the Revolutionary era – why people who lived a long time ago and often feel quite distant from our current moment still matter. And my argument in both my scholarship and my day-to-day work is that so much of the things that they did are essential to our day-to-day life today. The institutions they created, the practices they established, they shaped the world we are living in. And so it's important to know what happened and why it happened, and I think that in this moment where we have a pretty significantly fractured media ecosystem and that kind of thing, it's essential to try and meet people where they are, which is what I try to do.

PENMAN: And as a trained historian, can you talk about the role that history has in understanding civics and in civics education?

CHERVINSKY: Well, I think it, it has two essential roles. The first is that we cannot be citizens in an active sense, and I really try and encourage people to think of citizen or citizenship as a verb, not as a noun, because it's really important for us to know how to participate – both how to vote, that's a very simple, and I think the most central part of citizenship, but also who to petition if you need something for your local community. So many people don't understand the division of labor between local, state, and federal government. And so I think that knowledge is really, really important. And history informs that knowledge. Because history tells us what's worked in the past, what's been effective in the past, and, critically, how it came to be. So how did those institutions come about in this way? How did people decide that there should be a state, local, and federal divide between that authority? I also think that so much of being a citizen is understanding that the United States is the only nation that is built on an idea, and that is an incredibly complicated and an incredibly messy thing to do. And it has produced an environment that we debate about what it means to be an American. And we have debated that from the beginning. And I think that's actually a really amazing opportunity because if people have been debating that from the beginning, then we're not quite so alone, or we haven't devolved so far. And so the history of trying to figure out who counts as an American is central to understanding what it means to be an American. 

PENMAN: As I mentioned a minute ago, you have this Substack, which I encourage our listeners to subscribe to because it's really great. So you recently wrote, I think it was December, about the Monroe Doctrine in 2025. And you said, and I'm quoting because this made me laugh, you said that “this material is central to one of the chapters in my new in-progress book on John Quincy Adams. So it's interesting – ” And then you put in parentheses – “fun, weird, confusing, nerve wracking to see it so relevant today.” So Lindsay, I wanted you to take me through that. Like, why is it fun, weird, confusing, nerve wracking?

CHERVINSKY: Let me start with the most pedestrian, which was that I sold this book contract last year. And so on one hand it's like self-congratulatory to be like, aha, I predicted that this would be relevant prior to it actually making the news. And then on the other hand, I'm kind of like could you wait to discuss it until I'm able to actually promote the book? So there's like this self, this self-promotion element of like no, I want this hook later. So those are sort of like the personal reasons. But also, I was anticipating having to explain to people what the Monroe doctrine is and why it matters and why it's relevant today. And so to see what was a very 19th century concept, this idea that the United States was this new superpower and it was basically saying to European powers that they, that the United States would not permit further colonial projects in the Western hemisphere, that anything that was in existence they would permit, but they wouldn't permit any recolonization, which of course was not actually a reflection of where American power was in 1823. It was very much a ambitious sort of projection of where we would go. To see such a statement of like very much 19th century worldview and 19th century power projected onto the 21st century when we live in a very different world, the United States is in a very different place, is bizarre because it in some ways actually demotes the United States to a much lesser power. It demotes us to not one of the great world powers and to sort of striving to be something that suggests we're no longer in that space. And so that is a very disconcerting message. 

PENMAN: Are you ever surprised by how often you as a predominantly 18th and 19th century historian are able to engage so directly in contemporary events?

CHERVINSKY: At this point I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised. I got my PhD in January of 2017, and it was four days before the inauguration when I got the sign-off. So I have only ever operated as a professional historian in very historic times, and in times that are changing rapidly and wildly, and our conception of the presidency is in flux, and our attention to the presidency is unusual. It used to be that people could go days and weeks and maybe even months without thinking about the president because even though it was an incredibly powerful office, it wasn't as newsmaking as it is today. And so there was a period of time in 2017 and 2018 where I was really stunned that I could draw these really obvious connections between the 18th and 19th century and today. 

I'm less stunned now because it's happening so much, but it's also a key part of like my main scholarly argument that I give to public audiences, which is that much of our institutions, but especially the presidency, isn't actually written down. Article II in the Constitution is incredibly short, and that was largely by design, both because they were running out of time at the Constitutional convention, and also because the more specific they were, the harder it was going to be to get it ratified. And they trusted George Washington, who everyone agreed would be the first president, to fill out the gaps and to flush out the details. And he did. And he did in a way that was trusted and safe, as they anticipated that he would. And those actions laid the groundwork for the norms and customs that were repeated over time and ultimately built this type of scaffolding around the presidency that actually defined what this office is supposed to be. We don't really think of the presidency that way, but that's how it is. And so so often I get these questions about can he do that? And it's because no one has ever done it before because most presidents have largely adhered to these norms and customs. And so it hasn't been tested in the court of law, for example. And so all the time I'm talking about the 18th and 19th century origins of the presidency because that is the institution that we have inherited.

PENMAN: And I think that underscores the importance of understanding our civics, having a civics education. 

CHERVINSKY: One hundred percent. You know what's amazing? I was talking to a college professor the other day and she said many of her students, she always finds a way to have them read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And many think that the presidency is Article I because it's so much more powerful. And so understanding the founder's expectations that Congress is supposed to be the most powerful office, Congress is number one, for a reason, is stunning to students, and that's essential knowledge to have. 

PENMAN: That leads into another question I had, which is why, and you've already answered this a little bit, but expand upon i, if you will, why it is so important, especially for K through 12 students, to have this education.

CHERVINSKY: Well, living in a republic requires citizens to choose every generation to uphold institutions. Our institutions are incredibly fragile, even if the country is at a point of strength, because they're not generally enforced through military might, and they are not backed by a hereditary divine right. And so as a result, citizens have to choose that these things will continue to survive. And in order for them to continue to survive, citizens have to have trust in them, have to believe that they're worth preserving, that this system actually works for them. And there are studies that suggest and polls that suggest that less than 50% of, I think it's Gen Z, believes that democracy can work. That should be a terrifying statistic to people because if citizens don't think the system works, they have no reason to wish to continue it. And so it's essential for our citizens to understand how the system was formed, who is responsible for what, so they can ask the appropriate people for the right things and hold the correct people for bad actions or hold them accountable for bad actions. Like for example, normally the president doesn't actually control the economy. There are exceptions that have major consequences, and we're living through some of those right now. But generally, the state of the economy is not something the president can just push a button and change. I think if more citizens understood the actual role over the economy, or for example, the condition of your roads or your education policy, then they would feel more trust in the people they select to appoint them because they would know who's making which decision.

PENMAN: I'm curious how you see this play out in your day job, as you put it. The George Washington Presidential Library is just across the street from Mount Vernon. It's not just a hub for scholars. It's a major tourist site. How do you see members of the public coming into this space and engaging with history?

CHERVINSKY: I think in a couple of ways. A lot of citizens are understandably frightened in this moment, and they're looking for reasons to be optimistic or to feel hopeful. They're not looking for a false narrative. They're not looking for a Pollyannish perspective, but they want to understand either how the nation has gotten out of difficult moments before, or why they should continue to be hopeful about where we can go. And the revolution is a story of a lot of dark moments and overcoming those dark moments. And the founding is that same story. It's not a story of perfect people making perfect decisions. It's a story of very flawed people managing to create incredible things despite the odds and with no roadmap to follow. So I think this place can offer something to be proud of and something to aspire to in a way that, you know, we tell the full story. We talk about slavery, we talk about the enslaved community, but that is the American story and we can still be proud of it. And so I think there are people who come that are looking for something to be proud of, and I think that we can love the nation and want to improve the nation and still be proud of the nation. So that's, I think part one. 

Part two is civics education is often a multi-generational activity because while schools play a big role in it, so do parents and grandparents. And so we have massive school groups that come. In fact, the other day I got to see my eighth grade teacher who brought me to Mount Vernon in 2002, and she was bringing her 29th year of students for their spring break trip. And she's amazing and she's still such a phenomenal history teacher, and she's so instrumental to my career. So obviously teachers are hugely important and schools are hugely important. But we also see a lot of families and we see parents and grandparents here with their children and grandchildren, and that is such an important part of civics and history because oftentimes people have to be taught to care about these things or they have to have their interests sparked. My mom had this family rule that any trip we went on had to have something cultural or educational. And so that meant we went to some crazy places because there was no trip that had an exception. And yet I have a picture of myself and my sister, and I was six and she was four, and we're at Jamestown, and I'm wearing a steel helmet and armor. Having that lived experience, being able to see it and feel it, makes history and civics come alive to people. And so we want Mount Vernon and other lived history places like this to be a place where families can come and share and make memories, but also to be a part of the community. We want this to be a community space because that's how we're going to ensure that the next generation cares about these things.

PENMAN: And you alluded to this, but I was going to ask you if you did have a particular teacher, because of course this seminar is geared towards K through 12 teachers, and the hope is that we'll send them back to the classroom feeling better equipped to address some of these topics with their students. So did you have a moment, a teacher in particular who sparked the budding historian in you?

CHERVINSKY: Well, I always loved history and I was a voracious reader when I was a kid, so I read a ton of historical fiction, but I think that I had four teachers over the course of my career at each stage that either encouraged it at a moment where it might have died or saw something in me that I didn't see yet. So my fifth grade history teacher was the one that really taught me revolutionary history for the first time. And that was obviously a huge spark because I've always been super interested in that. At the time we did this activity, which they don't do anymore because – well, for a lot of reasons, but it was called colonial days. And you would like dress up in the clothes and you would learn how to make butter and candles and learn how to sew a little quilt. And it was so formative in my memory and so I wish that there was a way that still could be done in a way that makes people comfortable because it was so instrumental. Then my eighth grade history teacher, she saw that I had this passion and this interest and frankly, skill, and pushed me, but gave me the opportunity to flourish in that space. My high school AP history teacher in both US History and European history was the one that believed in me when I was not able to see it myself. And she, I think, got me through high school in a lot of ways and she also introduced skills and knowledge that were essential. And then my college mentor was amazing. He was a phenomenal historian and he was the one that when I said, oh, I actually, I really don't wanna go to law school. That's a terrible idea. And this was my second semester of my senior year of college. I had taken the LSATs, I had applied to law schools and I had gotten in. And at the last minute I was like, I actually really don't want to do this. He didn't say duh, or maybe you should have thought of this sooner. Or, wow, it's really stupid that you're just knowing that now. He believed in me and helped me get into graduate school really taught me to write and so he was phenomenal. Teaching is an incredibly difficult job, and now so more than ever, because it's under fire and history is very much under fire, and yet it is such pivotal and essential work. And so I just have such incredible gratitude to the people doing it because it made my work possible. It saved me. And I know that is true for other students as well.

PENMAN: Well thank you so much, and again for listeners, you can find more about Lindsay's work at her website, which is LindsayChervinsky.com and that's where you can also subscribe to her Substack and read more about what she's working on. So thanks again, and we'll see you this summer. 

CHERVINSKY: Great. Looking forward to it.

PENMAN: Next week’s episode is the last in our Civics in the Classroom series, and features a conversation with Liz Covart, creator and host of the award-winning podcast Ben Franklin’s World. Be sure to tune in.