Chapter 8: Trying on the Shoes of Historical

Actors, Teaching Empathy

Project Clio PDMarch 28th, 2012

What is historical empathy?

“Historical empathy is the understanding of past institutions, historical practices, or actions as making sense in light of the way people saw things…[It] is just not having the inert knowledge that people saw things in the way they did, but also being able to use that knowledge to make sense of what was done.”(Lee 2005, 46)

Historical empathy asks, “Why did an individual or group of people, given a set of circumstances, act in a certain way?” (Yeager and Foster, 2001, p.14)

[It encourages students] to judge past actors in their own historically situated context and on its terms.” (Levesque, 2008, p. 167)

…. “Students must listen to the voices of the past without preconceptions. They must let people of the past begin and end their own sentences.” (Mandell and Malone, 2007, p. 22)

Thirteen Days: October 16th –October 28th1962

“Thirteen Days” (2000)

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/312236

EX COMM

Dillon LBJ RFK

TaylorMcNamara

DillonBundy

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara

US Ambassador to the USSR-

Tommy Thompson

Vice President Lyndon Johnson

Attorney General Robert

Kennedy

Sec. of Treasury Douglas Dillon

Special Counsel to the President Ted Sorensen

Secretary of State Dean Rusk

National Security Advisor

MacGeorge Bundy

Your Task: Each table will put themselves in the shoes of a

different EX COMM advisor.

Read the quotations from your advisor.

Prepare a brief report to the president summarizing your position.

Identify which of the 5 options your advisor would most likely support.

Choose a spokesperson to represent your advisor

Debrief President Kennedy What is the advice of each EX COMM

advisor?• Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon• Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy• Central Intelligence Agency Director John

McCone• National Security Advisor MacGeorge Bundy• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General

Maxwell Taylor• Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara• Secretary of State Dean Rusk

What were the EX COMM advisors’ actual positions?

Kennedy’s Decision:

Your Task: You have been hired as President Kennedy’s press

secretary and asked to write a press release describing the outcome of the debate on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Your press release should address the situation in Cuba and the outcome of the decision to blockade Cuba from the perspective of President Kennedy. A press release is very formal, very concise, and very precise in its writing. When crafting your press release be sure to address these elements:

* The causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis * President Kennedy’s options * The choice President Kennedy made and why he

made it.

Share Out: Read your group’s press statement

The Crisis in Perspective: Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/312085