Historian of the United States House of Representatives

Encyclopedia : H : HI : HIS : Historian of the United States House of Representatives

The Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives is an official appointed by that legislative body to study and document its past. The current Historian is Robert V. Remini, appointed on April 28, 2005.

The post was created in 1983 and its first holder was University of Maryland, College Park historian Ray Smock. In a move that was seen by many as politically motivated, Smock was fired by House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995 when the Republican Party took control of the House.

Gingrich appointed Christina Jeffrey, a political scientist from Kennesaw State College, to the post in January 1995. However, a controversy arose over comments Jeffrey had made in 1986, whilst evaluating a program called [Facing History and Ourselves] for the US Department of Education. She wrote "The program gives no evidence of balance or objectivity. The Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view and is not presented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan." Democrats and Jewish groups expressed outrage at the comments, but Jeffrey stated that the allegations against her were "slanderous and outrageous". Nonetheless, Gingrich dismissed Jeffrey a few days after she took up the post.

The post was vacant for the next decade until House Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed Remini, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of numerous works on President Andrew Jackson, in 2005.

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