“Truth, Lies, and Democracy: A Historian’s Reflections”: Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld
On Thursday, October 6, 2022, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest marked the fifth anniversary of the center with keynote speaker Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld, the History Department Chair at the University of Pennsylvania and the 2022 Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the Library of Congress. Dr. Rosenfeld’s address,“Truth, Lies, and Democracy Now: A Historian’s Reflections”examined the importance of truth in the success of modern-day democracy. Dr. Paul Rosier, Director of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest, formally introduced Dr. Rosenfeld to the audience and the Albert Lepage Center Advisory Council. Watch the recording here.
In an era of misinformation and pivotal political campaigns, factual truth is often difficult to come across. Celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Albert Lepage Center, Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld, a Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, explored the gravity of verifiable knowledge in democracy in her keynote address titled, “Truth, Lies, and Democracy Now: A Historian’s Reflections.”
Beginning her address with the topic of the 2020 American presidential election, Dr. Rosenfeld set the framework for how disinformation has emerged in modern democracy. With former President Trump claiming that the election was stolen, a deliberate and manipulative fictional claim, the threat of disinformation pervading into American social and political culture became legitimate. Rather than accepting defeat, Trump’s misguided allegation called into question the validity of all subsequent American democratic elections. As Dr. Rosenfeld expressed, the course of honest elections and democratic processes could be altered by this intentional malintent, whether it be in the United States or internationally.
Although democracy is oftentimes portrayed as being collective and acting on behalf of the communal conscience, Dr. Rosenfeld’s speech argued that many democracies lack a form of commonality. Without a shared culture or belief, the “we” in a democratic society does not exist, therefore allowing misinformation, false or inaccurate information, and disinformation to flow through society more easily. Dr. Rosenfeld’ address made clear that these tools for division operate most successfully in communities that do not possess a type of shared background. While misinformation has served as the most common opponent of truth, the ability for disinformation to permeate throughout schools and politics without checks and balances has raised questions about the accessibility of truthful sources.
In the latter half of her talk, Dr. Rosenfeld concentrated on ways in which individuals can seek out credible sources on the micro level, arguing that truth matters for the survival of democracy as well as conveying changes that need to be made on the macro level. With the birth of new media, a de-emphasis on learning valuable habits to find substantiated sources has developed. News spanning social media platforms has prompted many to focus on what is quick and accessible, rather than what is well-founded. Thus, Dr. Rosenfeld established that libraries and schools must act as a liaison between students and the verified news, breaking the epistemological gap. Moreover, sober non-partisan fact checking should be implemented on the micro level in order to encourage the younger generations to pursue better habits for researching current events through news media and scholarly sources. If sensationalized headlines and articles are the sole forms of political information consumed by the young, then the knowledge gap between factual truth and what is learned through deceitful news will only continue to grow.
Moreover, public policy is most essential to the survival of democratic processes and recorrecting the intellectual course for factual truth. Throughout her lecture, Dr. Rosenfeld indicated that to stop disinformation like the lie of the stolen election from being accepted by members of society, the government must implement policies that address economic inequalities, culture, and education, as well as regulate new media. If these issues that cause citizens to fall prey to manipulative politics are addressed on a public policy level, then the general public will be less inclined to fall victim to devious political rhetoric. By systematically altering systems of neglect or oppression, misinformation and disinformation will become more recognizable to the generic public and perceived negatively. Although uncertainty is a given in democracy, Dr. Rosenfeld asserted that the dogma of truth is the cornerstone of duration and success in democracy; thus, as a society it is imperative to begin by learning new, better habits, and on the larger scale, push for policies that will emphasize producing the truth.
