Applied History Project

The mission of Harvard’s Applied History Project is to revitalize applied history by promoting the production and use of historical reasoning to clarify public and private challenges and choices. Founded by Professors Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson in 2016, the Applied History Project builds upon the foundation laid by Professors Ernest May and Richard Neustadt in the 1980s, reflected in their book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. 

Advancing its mission, the Project sponsors the Applied History Working Group of faculty members across Harvard University to organize discussions with scholars and practitioners; supports historians and policymakers in producing Applied History; develops courses in Applied History; funds the Ernest May Fellowships in History and Policy for pre- and post-doctoral students; and holds Applied History Events open to the Harvard Community and the public. Harvard’s project is one of the leaders among a rapidly expanding network of universities and think tanks that are furthering the discipline of Applied History by clarifying predicaments and choices to inform better decisions.

The Project gratefully acknowledges the Stanton Foundation's generous support for its Applied History endeavors. 

Quote of the Week 

“Visiting the past is something like visiting a foreign country: they do some things the same and some things differently, but above all else they make us more aware of what we call ‘home.’” – John Arnold, in Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (2010) 

(More Quotes ») 

Article of the Week 

“Trump and His Advisers Clearly Haven’t Actually Read Thucydides” by Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times, May 18, 2026. 

Recalling White House aide Stephen Miller’s pronouncement that “we live in a world that is governed by strength,” Polgreen argues that Trump and his team have misunderstood the lesson from Thucydides’s telling of the Melian Dialogue, which realists cite for evidence that “might makes right.” As the Melians warned the Athenians, the unpopular exercise of violence may “make greater the enemies that you have already, and...force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it.” Polgreen compares Melos’s advice to Hannah Arendt’s distinction between counterproductive violence and legitimate power. As both the Melians and Arendt would predict, potential friends from the Iranian public to longtime international allies are becoming frustrated with US hubris and unilateralism, Polgreen writes.