Steven Baumann, former MFS Middle and Upper School History Teacher, is a vexillologist, or someone who studies the history and symbolism of flags (find previous reporting on him in “The Power of the Flag” by Dinah Megibow-Taylor ’24 inside “Stokes Hall Timeline Removed in Light of Confederate Imagery: An In-Depth Report”).
His interest in flags stems from his background in history, where he learned that flags are a way to access the past. Baumann views flags as having cultural significance, considering them to be a direct way of communicating people’s ideas since the early modern world.
Note: This interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, was conducted over a phone call.
WordsWorth (WW): What do you think flags mean to people, historically, and how has the meaning of the American flag changed over time to now?
Steven Baumann (SB): Flags mean different things to different people at different times. Certainly, there’s a connection between the flag and the nation-state, and at its most basic level, it goes back to the most cited argument in the social sciences: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, that the printed word is actually what brings communities together and brings nations together.
I see the flag as an extension of the printed word. It is literally a material that could be shared and reproduced … So in that way, it’s able to create a sense of identity. And certainly in the U.S., that’s the case.
The tricky thing about national identity, and identity in any sense, is that it’s always changing. I’ll give you an example. For a while, Arizona had kind of a traditional flag, but in the last 30 or so years, they redesigned it with a rising sun motif and a copper star that paid homage to the five seas of Arizona, which brought people from the East Coast and from the west to live in Arizona, but the flag actually resembled the flag of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam (the communists of South Vietnam). So, Arizona is a perfect example of how this idea of trying to bring people together under symbols like copper that are so important to the economy of Arizona, still could trigger people who had fought in the Vietnam War and saw that rising sun behind the star as a symbol of communism. So I think you can kind of pinpoint different perspectives on flags as symbols at almost any time in history, and I think that’s why they’re so interesting.
WW: What are the laws around lowering the national flag? What is the difference between flying them at full mast versus half mast, and what does it mean?
SB: There’s not really [a] law against it. It’s more of a tradition. [The lowering of the flag] might have come from the [early] days of sailing ships. If someone prominent had died, they would lower the flag with the idea of this invisible flag of death above the person, or above the flag that you’re flying. And most ships would have had the flag of a nation-state or a trading company like the East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. And so that’s where it comes from. It comes from this maritime heritage, and in the U.S., it is a relatively modern invention.
In 1923, back when Warren Harding was still president, independent groups (non-governmental organizations now) got together, people with an interest in the U.S. got together, and they created a flag code, and that was totally independent of the government and independent of law. It was just a bunch of people who were saying, “This is how we need to treat the American flag.”
It wasn’t until the 1940s, during World War II, that the flag code was adopted by Congress. This is where it becomes kind of like legalistic, but still, the flag code just says words like “should,” “encouraged to,” and “shouldn’t,” which is not legally binding language. So, from the 40s to the present day, presidents or Congress could say that we should lower the flag to honor [someone]. Usually, it’s for a high-ranking government official or someone who is in an official capacity. So when a president dies, or a national tragedy like 9/11 occurs, [the flags would be lowered]. Now the president only really has control over federal buildings, so the President could say, federal buildings need to lower the flag, and the federal building will do it.
But a school, especially an independent school like MFS, is not at all bound by this. It’s not a law. And so, the lowering to half mast would totally just be out of their own volition, just like doing it to honor what the government says. So once it gets to an independent school like MFS, it becomes a question of who is actually going to go through with this and why, and so that’s where controversy can arise.
WW: What would happen if a federal building or a public high school, per se, refused to lower the flag; would that be an issue? Would there be a punishment for that or not?
SB: No, it’s still [considered] “should.” However, especially in federal legalism, you can punish people in other ways. Say the president says you should lower the flags to half-mast to honor a person. And we could choose any federal agency, but say the Smithsonian (a museum that’s owned by the federal government). The Smithsonian could say, “We’re not going to do it.” Well, the president can’t say that they’re fired because they’re not lowering the flag, but the president can fire them [for other reasons]. So you can still punish people, but it doesn’t have to be exactly because of the flag. So at the end of the day, the president has real power to inflict punishment on people, whether or not it’s for the issue that you think it’s for. And so that’s the power differential there that could get people into trouble.
As far as schools, schools are state-controlled, so a public school wouldn’t necessarily be punished for this (unless they got punished by federal funding being removed). But federal funding would probably go to the state before the school. So, even still, states are kind of free from this, and this became a legal issue right away.
There was a Supreme Court case in 1943 because there had been people in the U.S., especially Quakers, who saw things from a different perspective, and who, for example, didn’t want to salute the flag, or didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the flag. The Supreme Court case decided that no one is obligated to do it. In the case of religious objectors pledging allegiance, which was another thing that came out of this U.S. flag code meeting in 1923, the Supreme Court case essentially said students don’t have to participate if they don’t want to. In any of these flag issues, it’s optional.
WW: Are there different flag codes for different states, or is it all the same nationally?
SB: The flag code is a national thing. The flag code is there for the U.S. flag, and states could have their own codes. I’m not sure about individual states. Most of my interest lies in international politics. Internationally, it’s highly variable; I can think of an example of Saudi Arabia, which has the Islamic statement of faith on the flag, which says, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” That message is the most important thing to Saudi Arabia. So even if the king dies in Saudi Arabia, they’re not going to lower the flag because God and Muhammad are still more important than the king. The Saudi flag is a unique example — you’re not going to see it on T-shirts for the most part, you know, because there’s actually religious connotations to it. There are other countries like Japan and Germany, where in the 20th century, the flag became militarized and it’s only used for absolutely official purposes, and that’s it. So it’s a super interesting window into how some of these nations view politics.
WW: Can anyone besides the president decide to lower the flag?
SB: As far as I know, it’s almost always the president or government officials who are calling for [the lowering of the flag]. Past presidents or high-ranking secretaries of state have called for it due to national tragedies (e.g., 9/11 or natural disasters like the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina). It also happens on some holidays, such as Flag Day, to commemorate it. You might see flags at half-mast honoring soldiers or something — it’s almost always the executive branch that’s calling for that. I’m pretty sure that Congress wouldn’t have that ability, nor the Supreme Court.
WW: Is flag-burning also protected under free speech and expression?
SB: Yeah, absolutely. This is where the flag code is really exposed as not being a law, because it says flags are only burned when they’re old, like a goodbye funeral for the flag, but they’re certainly not burned as an act of protest. It shouldn’t even touch the ground, or be printed on shorts or on sunglasses, etc. All of these are considered profane uses of a sacred object. In the U.S., there’s no state religion. So the state religion, the soul of a secular nation, becomes the nation itself. And so the flag is, in the mind of the people who designed the flag code, a sacred object. And so, I mean, you could take this quite far, because it is popular for people to wear the American flag, but the flag code does not recommend that. And the flag code says every school should have the flag. It doesn’t matter if it’s private or public; every single school in the U.S. should have a flag (but that’s just not the case anymore).
This is the difference where the Supreme Court case pulls rank over this code, even though Congress put forth that we should follow the code. It is because ultimately, our Bill of Rights protects expressions of free speech. [Compared to international laws], the U.S. definitely has more protections in terms of speech, which are extended to the flag as well. This is another example of the question “What can you do to a flag respectfully?” If you’ve seen the thin blue line flags that are modified American flags, some people say you can modify that American flag because you’re supporting police officers. But the flag code doesn’t agree with that. The flag code would say you should not modify the American flag. Just fly it. Honor them, but don’t modify it. Don’t change it. It’s a tricky issue, but it is protected by free speech.
WW: What are your personal thoughts about lowering flags to honor individuals?
SB: I’m going to answer this like any good history teacher would, in a very, very roundabout way that maybe you forget the question by the time I’m done talking. But there’s a great koan for this. A koan is like an unanswerable or a really challenging riddle in East Asian philosophy. This koan comes from a collection of koans called The Gateless Gate. It’s a story of two monks walking along, and they see a flag. One of the monks points at the flag and says, “Oh, the flag is waving, the flag is moving.” And the other monk says, “No, you’re wrong. The flag is not moving. The wind is blowing.” The leader monk hears this and sees this happening in his monastery and says, “You’re both wrong. It’s not the flag that’s moving; it’s not the wind that’s moving. It’s your mind that is moving. If your mind was not moving, the flag would not be moving, and the wind would not be moving.”
I think this is great. Of course, the wind is moving. We have the science to prove it. But what it does is it points out that this is all a matter of perspective. So when we have an issue of a flag at half-mast, or we have all these feelings, the flag isn’t actually saying anything to you, and even the order to put the flag at half mast is now less important than the person who’s viewing the flag, and we’re learning more about the person and their viewpoints than the flag is actually teaching us about the situation. This could be why I like flags so much. The flag is giving us a mirror into the philosophy and the ideology of the person who is looking at the flag. Perhaps this is why I pursued the academic path [of vexillology]. And I’m a teacher rather than an activist. To me, the really interesting part about flags is watching people react to them and seeing how people are communicating their feelings through these flags. And so that’s what I’ve really been paying attention to right now at my own home.
