The History and Future of State Secrecy

Please join us for the first lecture in our Spring 2024 series "Knowledge in the Shadows: Intelligence, Hidden Pasts, and Historians in the U.S. and Germany".

Matthew Connelly: The History and Future of State Secrecy
For its first one hundred and fifty years, the U.S. government had relatively few secrets, and subsidized the free flow of information to ensure democratic accountability. But all that changed after Pearl Harbor, with the rise of the dark state. The last two decades have witnessed particularly dramatic growth in government secrecy, at the same time that declassification has all but collapsed. Now that so much is secret, it has become all but impossible to protect truly dangerous information. Connelly explores the policies and practices that gave rise to the current crisis, above all presidents’ determination to preserve sovereign power over “national security information.” The digital archiving methods that were supposed to stop unauthorized leaks instead gave rise to Wikileaks, and the

wholesale destruction of the documentary record has made it all but impossible even for historians to hold public officials to account. But new data science methods now make it possible to systematically analyze patterns and anomalies in state secrecy and show not only what the government did not want us to know, but why.
Matthew Connelly is a professor of international and global history at Columbia University, and director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Connelly is also the principal investigator of History Lab, a project that uses data science to analyze state secrecy. His publications include A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, and The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals about America’s Top Secrets. Connelly received his B.A. from Columbia in 1990 and earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1997.
With the 2024 Spring Lecture Series at the German Historical Institute Washington, we cordially invite you on a journey through the captivating research field of “Intelligence History.” Featuring leading scholars in the field, our four lectures offer insights into the covert realm of classified information, clandestine knowledge, and power dynamics and the role they played in the history of the Americas and Germany in the Twentieth Century. To what extent have secret agencies and their practices of gathering information influenced international politics and the course of history? On the home front, how have the delicate relationships between secrecy and democracy evolved over time, evident in public debates and the treatment of individuals today known as “whistleblowers”? The lectures delve into these questions, shedding light on the intricate interplay between secrecy, democracy, and their impact on society. Furthermore, the lectures address the meta-level of research, highlighting the epistemological challenges faced by intelligence historians. How do scholars navigate inaccessible archives and information? What innovative perspectives, (digital) methods and data-driven approaches promise new insights into the world of secret services and declassified files? These inquiries form the cornerstone of our lectures, exploring new horizons in intelligence history.

Organized by Jana Keck and Carolin Liebisch-Gümüş (GHI Washington)
Cooperation Partners: International Intelligence History Association, Wilson Center, German Association for American Studies, and International Spy Museum

Please be aware that this event or conference, or a portion of it, could be live-streamed to registered participants watching remotely via ZOOM or a similar platform, or could be videorecorded for publication. By participating in-person, you understand that it is possible that you could be seen by registered participants watching the stream, that your comments may be seen/heard by participants watching the stream, and that a recording of the live stream could be made available on a video sharing service such Vimeo.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

German Historical Institute, 1607 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington, United States