Priorities

Ashley Parker's article in this week's New York Times Magazine ("All the Obama 20-Somethings") is making me think.

Probably a couple of months ago Pedro and I hosted a friend of ours who was in town from Washington, DC for an untimely funeral. I first met my friend in my freshman year of college when his undergraduate alma mater played mine at Homecoming. Although we usually only saw each other at most once a year, we stayed in touch over the years united by a mutual interest in progressive politics (often with him acting as my mentor in challenging my lingering conservatism). After graduation, while I went into a reasonably safe corporate job in Boston, my friend went abroad to Afghanistan, working to help set up the country's educational system in the aftermath of the Taliban's fall. Upon returning to the States, he took a position in the Obama campaign and became my reliable source for an insider's view on the latest campaign news and gossip. When he last visited Pedro and me in Cambridge, my friend was about to embark on a new position in the West Wing supporting a very high-profile White House official (in the spirit of the Times Magazine article, I'll refrain from revealing either the position or the official). We talked about the work he would do on a day-to-day basis to literally keep our country safe. My friend is 26-years old; we're the same age.

I couldn't help but reflect upon our conversation with my friend in the context of reading Parker's article on the political service and social culture of the "Obama Generation" that is currently in the White House. Particularly striking to me was a quote from Eric Lesser (who is David Axelrod's body-man): "This is the way I can make my small contribution...I’ll be able to look my children in the eye and say, 'When I was in my 20s, I was a small part of something way bigger than myself.'" Having grown up watching the West Wing, where wonky but witty White House junior staffers were lionized as the idealistic force that could strengthen American democracy, public service has always appealed to me as a career. I even did a bit of it myself in college, first working for the Department of Parks & Recreation in New York and then for the California State Assembly. My work never rose to the level of importance of Lesser's in making sure that "Axe" stays on-schedule or of Jon Favreau's in making sure that Obama has the right words at his disposal. But it felt good to know that I was making government work for the people, whether by improving the conditions of New York City's parks or helping a constituent get subsidized housing.

I wish I had Lesser's confidence that I'll be able to look back in 30 years and tell my children that I was part of something much bigger than myself. There is a small part of me that regrets not taking a leave of absence from GSMCF in 2008 to work for the Obama campaign, or to volunteer in the field for the No on 8 campaign. The morning after the passage of Prop. 8, I woke up with a sinking feeling: What if I had done more than just donate money from Massachusetts? Why didn't I get on a plane and fight for what I really believe in? What do I want to be my legacy?

I suppose these kinds of doubts are inevitable as I'm beginning to think about wrapping up my 4 years in consulting. And I am indeed proud of (some of) the work I've done at GSMCF and the little impact I've had on the projects that have come across my desk. My friend and I both took risks, but on a different scale and in different directions. And as I'm now looking to start a career in academia, there are moments when I'm frightened by the potential irrelevance of sitting in an Ivory Tower for the rest of my life.

For better or for worse, I'm the only person who can control that aspect of my fate, and historians certainly don't have to be irrelevant to public life. Nancy Cott, who is Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard, helped set the record straight at the recent Prop. 8 trial as an expert witness on the changing nature and definition of "family." Eric Foner, who is Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia, has spoken and written widely on the controversy surrounding the curriculum revisions by the Texas State Board of Education. All of the Asian American historians with whom I met during my school visits urged me to become not just an historian but, more importantly, a scholar-activist who is actively involved in the communities that matter to me.

Marriage equality. Immigration reform. It may be too late to jump on the Obama bandwagon, but there's still plenty to do.