This year’s Head’s Forum, Then. Now. Next: Women’s History Across Generations, welcomed Dr. Valerie Paley ’79, Senior Vice President of The New York Historical and Director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. The annual Head’s Forum serves as an opportunity for Grades 11 and 12 students to experience how experts in a given field grapple with ideas. Paley presented a keynote talk, where she spoke of her experience as an Upper School student at Spence and the historical milestones of that time, followed by a conversation on her work as a historian with a student panel.

The student panel included a discussion on objects that each panelist brought to the forum; an artifact from a woman in their life that held significance for them. “It’s quite remarkable to think that while women have always made up over half of the population, it’s only within my own lifetime that historians have genuinely examined women’s experiences alongside those of men to create a more complete picture of the past,” Dr. Paley told them. 

Students asked Paley myriad questions involving the work of selecting, archiving, and displaying artifacts, including how modern-day objects might be archived in the distant future to educate others about today’s world. “It’s hard to imagine that the fleeting papers, emails, and texts that clog our daily lives might one day serve as important clues for future researchers and historians studying the year of 2026,” she said. “So, should we be mindful to appreciate our own moment and the primary sources of the future that touch our lives today? What do we choose to remember, and how do we do it?”