The Record Keeper

The National Archives and Records Administration might bring to mind an image of long, dusty hallways filled with filing cabinets, but the process of storing and categorizing documents and communications that are relevant to the nation’s historical record encompasses a lot more than that. After all, it’s not just the president’s paperwork that ends up in the National Archives. Among the records the agency, known as NARA, stores and maintains are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, plus more everyday documentation such as the service records of veterans, immigration paperwork, maps, videos, and tweets. There are also testaments to the nation’s more painful history, such as slave ship manifests and broken treaties with Native American tribes. And now, all of that falls under the purview of Colleen Shogan ’97, who was confirmed as archivist of the United States last May, during a time when the importance of federal recordkeeping has never loomed so large.

Shogan, who majored in political science at BC, was first nominated to be archivist in August of 2022, but wasn’t confirmed until nine months later because of political squabbles on Capitol Hill. She is the eleventh person to hold the position, and the first woman to be confirmed in the role. (Several women have previously served as acting archivist.)

Shogan said she is excited to show up to work each day. “This is definitely the place I’m supposed to be,” she said. Her interest in American history dates back to her childhood in Pennsylvania, when her family took vacations to historic spots like Gettysburg. “That brought the history alive to me in a way that you can’t just get from in a book,” Shogan said. After graduating from Boston College, Shogan earned a PhD in American politics from Yale University, then worked as a legislative assistant to the Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman before spending seven years at the Congressional Research Service. She was working as senior vice president for the White House Historical Association when she got the call that the Biden Administration was interested in her for the archivist role.

Mark Falzone ’97, who has been friends with Shogan since their days at BC and worked with her on one of Senator Edward Kennedy’s reelection campaigns, was struck even then by the way she could hold her own with anybody. “She really cared about the philosophy of what she was doing, but also the practical consequences,” Falzone said. “And politics has both of those things.”

NARA is generally considered to be apolitical, but it’s recently been roiled by accusations of partisanship. After all, it was the agency’s efforts to recover files that former President Donald Trump took with him after leaving office that led to his eventual indictment on thirty-seven charges related to unlawfully retaining government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Republican suspicions of political motivations in that case certainly contributed to the delay in Shogan’s confirmation, even though she had no role in the effort to retrieve the documents, which began prior to her nomination for the post.