"Trust me: I'm a historian" -- Part 4

Is historical scholarship compatible with public-issue engagement? 

I have always thought so. But I ran across the argument by Richard Posner, the former 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge (whose claim to legal fame is for "economic analysis of law"--more about that later), that a lesson of the Clinton impeachment is that historians[1] are not qualified to advance their views about such public issues.[2]

Now I have found a superb counter to Posner's argument: the 1991 presidential address of William E. Leuchtenburg to the American Historical Association:  https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/william-e-leuchtenburg. Leuchtenburg notes many instances in which historians have admirably stepped forward to provide their insights and advice in matters of high public interest, and he demonstrates that scholarship and public engagement are not inconsistent activities. 


[1] You may recall that Sean Wilentz, Jack Rakove, and other prominent historians there provided historical analysis to Congress about the topic of impeachment.
[2] Richard A. Posner, An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).