Reckoning with History: Collective Memory, Strategy, and the Politics of Remembrance

Harvard HKS

Historic wrongs often live on in the present. Survivors and their advocates frequently turn to current administrations, seeking recognition and reparations for wrongdoings that governments in the past were involved in. But remedies rarely come easily. For example, because people remember the past differently; because they question their responsibility for remedying past wrongs; or because public officials are reluctant to accept responsibility on behalf of the state because of legal,…