UCL - DIS Jenkinson Lecture 2021

Just, Temperate, and Brave: The Importance of Evidence – and Evidence Keepers – in Chaotic Times

2020 and 2021 have been marked by chaos, disorder, and despair: from the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, to the violent insurrection in January 2021 on the United States Capitol, to protests against autocratic and dictatorial regimes from Myanmar to Russia to China. These events have also demonstrated the critical importance of records, archives, data, and other sources of recorded proof: as tools to uphold justice and fight tyranny and oppression. In this year’s Jenkinson Lecture, Dr Millar drew on the issues addressed in her 2019 book A Matter of Facts: the Value of Evidence in an Information Age, to argue that evidence serves not only as a bulwark against alternative facts, fake news, and outright lies but also as an essential foundation for justice, reconciliation, democracy, and peace. She also argued that records and archives professionals must uphold their ethical obligations as trusted and trustworthy guardians, so that the documentary record, whatever its form, may serve as the standard against which “the conditions of human life” may be tested.