In the wake of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, it would seem that the US state is obsessed with surveillance and secrecy. But has this always been the case?
“My work aims to offer new and more productive ways of thinking about the history, and future, of world politics"
During his tenure as Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs Professor Matthew Connelly explored how the twentieth century transformed the radical transparency of the American Republic into a culture of state secrecy and a threat to open government.
He also examined the impact of the digital archive on the study of history through his teaching and collaboration with academics.
The Radical Transparency of the American Republic
For most of its history, the U.S. government’s commitment to transparency stood as a radical counter-example to the rest of the world. Washington, Madison, and Lincoln were in some ways as radical as Julian Assange in their commitment to transparency.
In his first lecture, Matthew Connelly explores how recent invocations of national security stand in sharp contrast with America’s founders and their principles.
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Open Government in the Age of Total War
How did the US national security state emerge and what shaped the government’s approach to official secrecy?
Matthew Connelly explains how the period 1914-1945, bookended by two horrendous world wars, transformed the US into a nation equipped with a vast intelligence-gathering apparatus that could dramatically curtail civil liberties.
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The Cold War and the Culture of Secrecy
Official secrecy in the U.S. during the Cold War altered the culture of government and served many hidden agendas.
Matthew Connelly explains how classified information became an institutional asset, security clearances became a way to police behaviour, and senior officials who leaked classified information could use tactic to gain higher office.
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Crowd-Sourcing, Surveillance, and the Era of the Synopticon
‘Big data’ poses a massive challenge to the democratic accountability. Over the last four years the U.S. has quadrupled the amount of information that it classifies annually. But the information revolution has also provided citizens with the means to address these challenges.
In his concluding Philippe Roman lecture, Matthew Connelly explains how data-mining can help preserve the principle of open government.
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Professor Connelly taught the seminar Hacking the Archive for LSE students.
The course focused on the ‘digital turn’ in history, where historians now have access to unprecedentedly large and rich bodies of information generated from the digitization of older materials and the explosion of 'born digital' electronic records. Can machines learn to be historians and answer previously impracticable questions?
Students on the course aimed to create a laboratory organised around a common group of databases in international history which can be used for multiple research projects.
Read more about Professor Connelly’s work in this in area in this Buzzfeed article.
During Matthew Connelly's time as Philippe Roman Chair, IDEAS hosted a two day private workshop entitled Famine and Feast: International Historical Research in the Digital Age.
The workshop assembled historians to develop new research tools for the digital age and answer questions such as:
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How will archives cope with the coming avalanche of electronic records?
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How might historians use computational methods to explore vast amounts of material when we don’t have archivists or finding aids to guide them?
Currently a professor in the Department of History at Columbia University, Matthew Connelly is also founder and director or the LSE-Columbia University Double Degree in International and World History.
His research focuses on planning and predictions, and using data science to analyse patterns in official secrecy.
He received his B.A. from Columbia and his Ph.D. from Yale. He has authored a wide-range of articles and publications, including the award-winning Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era and Fatal Misconception: the Struggle to Control World Population.
Find out more on Matthew Connelly's website.