An observer of the U’s history

By Louis Fine
Murphy News Service

Imagine office walls lined with books, photos, files , documents, displays and oral histories. A computer resting on a homemade stand-up desk, and a large sign depicting the history of Northrop.

This is an office in Morrill Hall, but just any office. It is the office of Ann Pflaum, the University of Minnesota’s historian.

Pflaum, a Crystal Bay native, is a very humble and learned woman who co-authored the book “University of Minnesota 1945-2000” and has been the historian at the U since 1999, but those are by no means her only accomplishments.

After graduating from Smith college in North Hampton, Massachusetts with a degree in history in 1963, Pflaum went to Harvard to get her master’s degree in 1964.

After marrying her husband and moving to England, she studied at the London School of Economics before moving back to Minnesota to enroll in a Ph.D. program at the University.

In 1976, she got her Ph.D. and began working as a Title Nine and 504 coordinator.

Later in 1999 she would become the University of Minnesota historian for what she said was its “sesquicentennial” or 150th anniversary.

Pflaum’s biggest inspirations are Queen Victoria and Virginia Woolf and in her spare time she likes to exercise, and read the works of Jane Austin. Pflaum also likes to travel with her family to England about once every five years.

Pflaum said she doesn’t consider herself a major figure as much as she is an observer of U of M history.

“I got to observe a lot of people, see a lot of things, be in the mix, but in the background,” Pflaum said.

As Pflaum reflected on her philosophies surrounding being a historian at the U, she quoted a favorite lecture of hers which said a university is not a “tight ship” as much as a “guided tour.”

“We are just, sort of, the executers of this wonderful knowledge that comes from the core of the university,” Pflaum said, “all sorts just popping up in different ways, and that is an important thing to remember, this is not a top down place.”

The next project Ann will be involved with is the upcoming meeting and conversation between the past six presidents of the U of M on May 4. Together their terms in office account four decades of leadership.

Louis Fine is a reporter studying Journalism at the University of Minnesota.

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