His resume couldn’t have been all that promising.
No formal education in either Middle East history and politics; no knowledge of Arabic; no experience managing universities (or any experience in a leadership position for that matter); an endless storehouse of historical analogies.
So how did Drew Erdmann, three years out of graduate school with a doctorate in history from Harvard, land the job of de facto minister of higher education in Iraq?
Erdmann was not directly plucked from the library and dropped onto the ground of post-war Iraq. Like so many history Ph.D.s, Erdmann failed in his search for an academic job. Not one to dwell in the past, Erdmann decided to experience first-hand the sorts of transitions he had studied. He made plans to fly to Kosovo.
The decision to move from Cambridge to a recent war zone wasn’t without foundation. Erdmann may not have been ROTC in his years in Cambridge, but he was equipped with a particularly relevant knowledge base. His dissertation examined American wars of the twentieth century and noted the increasing importance of post-war transitions in Americans’ conception of military success.
Erdmann’s plans to ship to Kosovo were disrupted when he received a phone call from Richard N. Haass, who had just become the director of policy planning in the State Department, as The New Yorker described in a recent feature.
It was four years ago, during a different sort of transition—the Bush administration had just been ushered into Washington—and the government was performing a talent search, looking for the most energetic and brightest minds. Erdmann had been highly recommended to Haass by his dissertation advisor (and old friend of Haass’), Warren Professor of American History Ernest R. May. He got the job.
Eventually, he landed in Iraq and began work in Saddam’s former palace, which the U.S. government continues to use as a makeshift office space.
Under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Erdmann was handed his orders—the man who only three years before had handed in his dissertation was now being held responsible for bringing Iraq’s university system up to speed with the rest of the international community. Among his mandates were: the “normalization” of Iraq’s scientific community; de-Baathification; and the opening of communication with the international academic community.
But post-war Iraq, even though it has yet to be filed in the annals of history, may very well be the domain for the historian.
“Everyone has their own historical comparisons, everyone is their own historian in policy planning,” says May. “The strength of the historian in an environment like post-war Iraq is his ability to say which comparisons hold force.”
But in practice, thinking historically was nearly impossible on the ground, Erdmann told The New Yorker. “There’ve been times when I don’t even know what I did 48 hours before. I try. It’s like a test for myself. Can I remember what I did the day before? I eventually can, but it takes effort. That’s not a good situation. You should be able to remember what you did in the last twenty-four hours,” he said from Iraq.
Now Erdmann is back in Washington, working in the National Security Council, where his superiors vetoed a request for an interview.
