On 28 April 2005, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) filled the decade vacant post of “Historian of the House of Representatives” and announced the appointment of University of Illinois at Chicago historian Robert V.
Remini to serve in that position. In making the announcement, Hastert stated that Professor Remini’s “commitment to documenting the American experience will serve our great institution and the American people well.”
Remini holds positions as Professor of History Emeritus and a Professor of Research Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and serves as University Historian. He is also the Distinguished Visiting Scholar in American History at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, where, since 1999, he has been working on his Congressionally ordered (P.L.
106-99) tome — a history of the House of Representatives. Remini is currently revising and polishing his 600-page draft that is expected to be published in the spring of 2006.
The appointment did not come as a surprise to many Hill insiders. As reported in the NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE some months back (see “After Nearly a Decade, House to Fill Historian Position” in NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol 10, #6; 13 February 2004), for years the Clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, has been building a professionally staffed History and Preservation Office to meet the needs of House members. He wanted to fill the vacant position through a nationwide search.
Likewise, historians had been quietly working to see that the position was modeled after the Senate Historian Richard Baker’s in terms of duties, responsibilities, and term of office (Baker, as a career historian has been in his position since 1975 and has served twelve different Majority Leaders). However, it did not turn out that way — Remini’s position is a “term” appointment, made by the Speaker, and therefore, in theory, is a partisan appointment. Unlike Baker, Remini, for example, could be replaced should the Republicans lose control of the House. At that time, a new Majority Leader could either re-appoint the current historian or select another individual. Remini, however, is devoted to keeping the position strictly non-partisan; he plans a courtesy visit to Democratic leaders in the near future. He told the NCH, “As long as I am historian, it will be non-partisan, just like Richard Baker’s Senate office.”
Inside sources report that Speaker Hastert originally wanted the historian position to be merely “honorific” — modeled roughly after the Library of Congress Poet Laureate position. Hastert also apparently was not impressed with the candidates advanced by the Clerk’s office. He wanted the first House historian in over a decade to be a person of stature within the historical community and Remini clearly filled the bill. According to Remini, “I was never a candidate…all of a sudden, out of the blue they asked me to do it.”
Exactly what the relationship will be between the House Clerk’s Office of History and Preservation and Remini’s has yet to be entirely ironed out.
After his appointment was announced, Remini immediately laid out an ambitious agenda for his new office that complements (not duplicates) the services that the Clerk’s Office of History and Preservation provides. His office will gather oral histories from current and former members, start a lecture series for freshman members, and, somewhat like the Clerk’s operation, provide reference services for members. With upcoming opening of the Capitol Visitor Center, his office will play an important role in developing exhibits and telling the story of the capitol to the visiting public. The new House historian’s goal is to see that history is not only recorded “but that it serves as a tool for the lower chamber.” Remini already has one assistant in place and expects to hire additional staff in the future.
Remini received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1951 and taught at a variety of distinguished schools. His extensive experiences include Columbia University, Fordham University, the University of Notre Dame, and Jilin University of Technology in the People’s Republic of China. Remini published over twenty books that include topics such as Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams. He recently won the Freedom Award from the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.
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