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This is On Point. I'm Anthony Brooks, in for Meghna Chakrabarty. This hour, the fight over America's history. We're talking about one of President Trump's many executive orders, this one entitled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. In it, Trump targets the Smithsonian Institution and its sprawling collection of museums, which he says promote a divisive, race-centered ideology. He says the Smithsonian needs to be restored to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.
The president claims that over the past decade, there's been a concerted effort to rewrite our nation's history in a way that makes America look bad. But his critics say the executive order does just that, that it's an effort to rewrite history in the service of his political ideology. So what happens when politics collide with our effort to understand our shared history?
Well, joining us now is Jennifer Schuessler. She's a reporter at The New York Times who covers scholarship, history and ideas. She's been writing a lot lately about this particular executive order and the Smithsonian. She joins us from New York City. And Jennifer, welcome to On Point. It's great to have you.
Great to be here. So I think it might be useful just to kick off this show with just a brief description of what the Smithsonian Institution is for listeners who might not have had a chance to visit these wonderful museums in Washington. Tell us just a little bit about what the Smithsonian is.
Well, the Smithsonian was founded in 1848 with a bequest from an Englishman who wanted there to be created in Washington, D.C., you know, a museum that would disseminate, promote and disseminate knowledge. And today the Smithsonian, I believe it's the largest museum complex in the world. They have 21 museums, most of which are in Washington on the Mall. They include the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of American History,
The American Natural History Museum. There are a few, a couple of them are in New York. And it also, the system also includes the National Zoo, some scientific research centers and a bunch of libraries. Right. So the president's executive order, which targets the Smithsonian, I'll just read a little bit of it.
Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. I'll read a couple more sentences. This shift has prompted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.
So say a little more about this executive order, what it says and what it wants to do with the Smithsonian. Well, I think one thing that's very interesting about this order is it's very consistent with things that President Trump has said, you know, both in his first term and since and early in his second term about how he believes American history should be portrayed, how it should be taught, how it should be written about. And
You know, some people may remember in the first term he called for a return to patriotic education. He created the 1776 Commission. So he's very interested in this, has been interested in this for a long time and is quite critical of the way that scholars, museums, you know, the radical left, as he puts it, portrays American history. So this executive order, it takes aim at the Smithsonian, and it doesn't really have a lot of very specific ideas.
directives, but it does ask, uh,
Vice President Vance, who is a member of the 17-person Board of Regents, to try to push the institution in a more, you know, you could say patriotic direction. And this does, even though he is not named, this does seem to be a shot across the bow at Lonnie Bunch, who is the secretary, the Smithsonian, the leader of the institution, and has been since 2019. Yeah, and I want to talk a little more about Lonnie Bunch in a minute. But
What are some of the examples that the president cites in his executive order, examples of divisive race-centered ideology? What's he talking about in particular here? Well, there are three things that are cited specifically. One of them is a graphic that appeared on the website of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2010.
Early in the summer of 2020, they had a whole sort of portal of educational resources that they were presenting to help Americans talk about race. This was in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. It included this graphic about, you know, quote unquote, white culture, which...
Among other things, said that the Protestant work ethic and belief in the value of hard work was a marker of, quote, whiteness. The nuclear family was part of white culture. This drew a lot of criticism from people on the figures on the right, including Donald Trump Jr., and I think from other people as well. And very quickly, the museum closed.
apologized for it and removed it, but it has come up over and over again. It's been off the site for five years, but the president cites this again here. He also cites an exhibit that's at the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art that I believe is called The Shape of Power, and it's about looking at the way that sculpture has advanced ideas about race and racial superiority, inferiority. So it criticizes some language in that exhibit. And it also cites the
And it criticizes the planned women's history museum, which doesn't physically exist yet, for planning to celebrate, this is the president's claim, the achievements of biological men in women's sports. I see. So those are the three examples. It's just three things. Right. Got it. Okay. So how have critics, how are the critics responding to this executive order? What are they saying? What's their concern? Yeah.
Critics of the order, you mean? Yes. Yes. Well, I think you've seen statements from a lot of historians, a lot of museum professionals saying that basically this order caricatures and misrepresents what the Smithsonian is, what it does, and also how historians do their work. There was a...
A forceful statement from the American Historical Association that was joined by, I think, a couple dozen other smaller groups saying, you know, look, the Smithsonian is one of the premier research institutions in the world. They're widely respected for the integrity of their research across all fields, you know, science, history. And also, you know, the role of a history museum isn't to celebrate, it isn't to blame. And in fact, what these museums do, what the Smithsonian does very well in the eyes of the public,
Historical Association is present all of our history and just let Americans and others who go there learn and think. Right. Yeah, I'm looking at that statement right now from the American Historical Association. Part of it says, our goal is neither criticism nor celebration. It is to understand, to increase our knowledge of history.
the past in ways that can help Americans to shape the future. So they're basically saying we don't have ideology, we're just dealing with facts, we're just trying to tell the story and let the story sort of fall where it does and help Americans make their decisions about the – make their own judgments about the past. Is that sort of fair what they're saying?
I think so, yes. And I think, you know, as you stated in your intro today, you know, some people, the people who are critical of this order see it as the president himself trying to dictate how the American story should be told, how we should understand our history, what information we should have access to, what information we should not have access to. Right.
And about that, about what the president is trying to do here, I want to ask you, how is the Smithsonian governed? You mentioned Vice President Vance has a role here. I gather along with the Chief Justice of the United States, he's a member of the board by law. But does the executive branch have authority over this institution? I mean, can the president just say, change the way you do business?
No, I don't think that anyway. Yeah, I would say no. I mean, obviously, this is all up for interpretation and debate. We'll see what happens. But the Smithsonian is an independent agency. It's effectively a public-private partnership. I think about a third of its $1 billion budget does come from Congress. Congress has authority over it. Congress makes the appropriation. And it's governed by a 17-member board.
By law, the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the vice president, whoever those people are at any moment, are on the board. There are also three senators, three members of the House of Representatives from both parties. And then that group selects, I believe it's nine, I might have bad math here, nine citizen members. So these are distinguished people from academia, business, economics.
just, you know, the public world more broadly. And it's a very mixed group, I think, politically. And they are charged with oversight. And one thing the president does in this executive order is direct Vice President Vance to say,
work with Congress to defund any exhibitions or programs that promote divisive racial ideology, as the president defines it, and also to appoint citizen members that are
in sympathy with and will further the spirit of this executive order. So they want to gain greater influence on the board. And I should say that I believe the board members serve for six-year terms that are staggered. So it's a little bit unclear when people are next up
Right. Now, you mentioned Lonnie Bunch a moment ago, the secretary of the Smithsonian. Tell us how he has responded to this executive order, what he's saying about it.
Well, to my knowledge, he has not said anything publicly. He has not directly responded to the order. He has not commented to any reporters as far as I know. The day after the order came out, which was two weeks ago today, he did send an email to employees at the Smithsonian, which basically states, we've received this order. By the way, they seem to have been taken by surprise by this order, which arrived on a Thursday evening.
And anyway, Dr. Bunch in his email to staff said, and I'll read from it here, we remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research, and the arts to all Americans. We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections, and objects rooted in expertise and accuracy. We will continue to employ internal review processes which keep us accountable to the public.
When we err, we adjust, pivot, and learn as needed. But basically, he's saying, you know, we will keep doing the things we always do, and we are accountable to criticism and questioning, as we always have been. But he doesn't seem to be saying, we're going to do anything different. We're going to do what the president wants. So...
That's all he said so far, as far as I know. One last question before we get to the break, which is coming up in about 30 seconds or so. Is anyone challenging this executive order? Is this the kind of executive order that some folks are challenging in court, for example? What's the status of that? I'm not aware of it. I mean, there has been criticism. You know, we just talked about the American Historical Association statement. But I don't—the thing is, the order itself doesn't—
say anything that's not specific. Like, it doesn't say, I defund the Smithsonian or fire Lonnie Bunch or anything like that. It just sort of says, like, let's move it in this direction. But I expect if...
It may be that there will be challenges to actions that flow from this order. All right. Jennifer Schuessler, stand by. We're discussing President Trump's executive order targeting the Smithsonian, what it could mean for how Americans understand their shared history. A lot more coming up. Stay with us. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.
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Joining us now is Mike Gonzalez. He's senior fellow at the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, and the author of an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner today, which is entitled Trump's Righteous Smithsonian Reforms. And Mike Gonzalez, it's great to have you. Thank you for joining us today.
Oh, very happy to be here, Anthony. And let me begin this way. So three weeks after Donald Trump's election, you co-authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal with Christopher Ruffo that said, in order to put a spike through the heart of woke, and then you went on, the White House must retake control of the museum, starting with the Smithsonian Institution. So why? What's your best argument for the White House to retake control of these museums and get them to bend this administration's political view of the world and history?
Sure. Just a small correction. It was the piece with Armin Thule, chief of staff to Christopher Ruffo. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Thank you for that correction. Sure. No, of course. We all make mistakes. Look, what we were saying from the very start, right after the election, was that Trump had to go on the offensive on the culture side. And that is actually what he's done from the very start of his second term is
He's been very engaged in the important effort to recapture what I would say the cultural ground that the left has occupied in the past few decades. Certainly in the last 10 years and that process accelerated rapidly after the BLM riots that rocked the country in 2020. So Trump has been, and what we said was, let's start with the Smithsonian because the Smithsonian was,
is an American institution, is everything that Jennifer described. It's huge. It's not just 21 museums, 21 libraries, but it also has learning tools for children. It's visited by 30 million people. And I'm sorry to say that it has become a completely signed up partner in this rewriting of history. I was listening to your conversation with Jennifer
And there was a back and forth on whether, who was rewriting history. Look, all that is happening here with this order, and I'm going to quote from Brian T. Allen, who's been writing about museums for years, he says,
It's the restoration of curatorial standards that existed before the 1619 Project and the Black Lives Matter mass hypnosis. This is how Brian T. Allen puts it, and I agree with that. Now, I can go on with you. I don't know how long you want me to speak, but I can go on with you. No, that's fine. I mean, I want you to speak more, obviously. Go ahead. No, I mean, I've got some follow-up questions, obviously, but please continue. But I want to just ask this basic question. Shouldn't the presentation...
of history be left in the hands of historians rather than politicians because they have such different aims. I mean, a political organization, be it the Trump administration or any administration, obviously has political ends that it's interested in. Historians have educational ends that they're thinking about. Aren't those two in conflict? And when it comes to presenting American history in American museums, shouldn't that be left in the hands of historians?
So it was – I had to chuckle when I heard before. I think it was Jennifer who said like this museum association said we don't have any ideology here.
We just deal with facts. That's just not the case. Well, give me a case in point. Jennifer talked about one or two of the cases in point that were mentioned in the executive order. What are you concerned about specifically? Well, let's just talk about how Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian, he was appointed in 2019 and immediately he embraced –
The 1619 Project. Now, I want you to understand and your listeners to understand— Wait, can I just—just to help our listeners remember, the 1619 Project was a project that was first published in the New York Times, and it was all about sort of the roots of slavery and—
It said that the beginning of the country was not the Declaration of Independence or the arrival of the Mayflower, but it was the arrival in 1619 of a Portuguese ship with slaves. Right, and fair to say it was controversial and it provoked a lot of debate. The New York Times was crystal clear that what it wanted to do was to, quote unquote, reframe the country's history. Nicole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project—
She said herself that she wanted her presentation of slavery to, quote, corrupt and corrode and shape everything about the United States. Okay, well, let's not get too deeply to the 1619 Project because I want to keep it focused on the Smithsonian. You asked me for a specific. Yeah, okay, go ahead. What Lonnie Bunch did is he said immediately he wanted to legitimize the 1619 Project and
He wanted, quote, everybody that thought about the 1619 Project to see that the Smithsonian had fingerprints on it, unquote. So he created a collection using elements from the 1619 Project to be used in class curriculum that was used by K-12 students. And then the 1619 Project itself included a section with documents and artifacts that
curated by Mary Elliott, who was then the curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. So indeed, the 1619 Project, which was mendacious and was attacked from the left and the right as making incredible allegations about the country, which
We know from the founders that said they wanted to rewrite and reframe the history of the country. The Smithsonian was all around it. I think that's a very clear example of how the Smithsonian in the last five years has – the last six years in this case has participated in this effort to rewrite the country's history. Well, let me –
Speaking of Lonnie Bunch, so in 2023, he wrote about an exhibition entitled In Slavery's Wake. And he said, among other things, a strong current of political leaders wants to prevent the public from engaging with black history, which they deem too divisive and create a culture of silence.
Respond to that concern, Mike, that executive orders like this are an effort to suppress a discussion and a deeper understanding about our past, even if it's an uncomfortable part of our past. Yeah, and that is not the case. Nobody—the fact that we had slavery for centuries and that slavery is heinous and disgusting, that's a fact. The fact that we had Jim Crow, that's a fact. The fact that we had lynchings, that's a fact.
What we're talking about is the promotion of this idea that America is systemically racist, that America has a history of oppression. I tell you, Anthony, I have lived overseas many, many years. I was a foreign correspondent. I'm sure you can hear that I was not born in this country. I have lived at least a year in seven countries reported from all over the world. America is by no means racist.
systemically oppressive. That, that is just the, not just a lie, but a damn lie. And in America, it's not a systemically racist either, which is a very, another damn lie that is trying, is trying to be promoted. But isn't it fair to say that it's both? I mean, the history is different. No, I'm just saying, isn't it fair to say that it's both? I mean, of course there have been periods of American history that are defined by racism. I mean, uh,
But that doesn't mean that's the whole story. So it just seems like you're cherry picking here and looking at particular bits of history and saying, you know, this is defining the whole story when I'm not sure that that's happening. No, no, no, no, no. That is exactly what is happening. In fact, one of the Washington Post correspondent, one of the Washington Post critics of the
of this executive order, one of the things that she, one of the holes that she thought she found in the executive order was, and I'm trying to find the executive order here, was that she, that Trump had said that, that America was a beacon for freedom. That's, I'm paraphrasing here. And what she asked was for whom, actually she said for who, but that's ungrammatical. She said, whose happiness did we advance? Whose happiness did we overlook? So
Nobody can claim that America is a beacon of freedom, which it is. And the evidence for that is that 100 million immigrants have come here since 1840. And one fifth of the black American population today has either immigrated here freely or are the children of these immigrants. So America is to the world a beacon of freedom. We cannot say that because we...
had slavery. The whole world has slavery. I can tell you, you know, countries in the Caribbean, Brazil had slavery. But we have this belief somehow that we create... Tim Kaine, Senator Tim Kaine took to the floor of the Senate about two years ago and said, we created slavery. No, slavery has been around since biblical times. It's awful. It's
But that doesn't mean that we should stop celebrating America's great history and great past. So, Mike, I want to before I let you go, what would you like to see happen? What's because this executive order doesn't talk specifically about what needs to happen in a big way. I mean, are you talking about different direction at the Smithsonian? What has to happen in your view?
Well, one thing that I would like to see right away is the defunding immediately of the Latino Museum, which presents this whole segment of the population as victims. It's a complete...
retelling of who Hispanics, Americans, Spanish surname Americans are, it should never get built. I would like to see the Smithsonian in general just be restored as Alan said to the standards that existed a mere five years ago. Let's stop the Smithsonian from being an activist institution that wants to rewrite who we are.
We have to present our faults. We have to present the problems with our history, but we also have to present all the things that have been achieved by this country. The critics say, no, the fact that we had these faults means that you cannot talk about its achievements. No, we have to really go back to presenting facts,
without the ideology. All right. Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Anthony. And let me introduce Dinah Raimi-Berry. She's joining us from Santa Barbara. She's professor of history and the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California in Santa Barbara. And Dinah, great to have you. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you. So give us your quick reaction to the president's executive order and what you just heard from Mike Gonzalez.
Well, thank you. One, the executive order talks about restoring truth to American history, right? And the sanity piece, it's difficult for me to even address that because we cannot control how people respond and receive history, you know, the history that we teach. And historians, everything that we do is about teaching the truth and teaching history based on historical facts and
based on historical research and also based on the ethics that govern our profession. And so I think that is what's missing from this is that it seems like there's a lot of information that
claims that historians have not done this, have not presented history in a very, very truthful way based on the documents that we have available to us, based on the records, and also based on new information. We revise history. We don't revise the facts of history, but we revise it when we get new information. So if somebody donates papers and family records about a particular battle that we didn't have
you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, then we think about how does that change what the narrative has been about this particular battle. And that is our job as professionals. There seems to be an assumption in this executive order that historians like you are partisan, that you're bringing a partisan point of view to your work, that you bring a political point of view to the work you do. Is that fair? Is that unfair? Respond to that idea.
I think it's absolutely unfair because if you look at what governs, as I mentioned, what governs our profession, many of us are members of the American Historical Association or the Organization of American Historians. And we have a code of conduct. We have ethics that we have to adhere to and it's our job to interpret history regardless of how we feel about it and how we think about it. But we just provide an interpretation of the past.
So I think it's not fair to say that. In our classrooms, we teach students, we show them multiple perspectives. We write textbooks and books about multiple perspectives of the American past. And we ask the students to come away with that, with their own interpretations. We're not trying to indoctrinate people. We're saying,
Who are all the people that were involved in American history? Who were all the physical people who were there at a particular moment? And let's tell those stories. And for a long time, those stories of all the people that were present were not included. And so that's the work of historians and how historians has how history has been rewritten over time.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that you teach history because I wanted to ask you about that. We're seeing states pass laws or expressing concern about the idea that the way history is taught in some areas makes people feel bad or guilty. What do you make of that? And I'm just wondering how you think about that when you teach difficult subjects about America's difficult history to your students.
Absolutely. It's a great question. When I teach, I teach the history of slavery. So I often open my classes and say to students, we're going to cover material that some of you may have heard before, some of you may not have heard before. You don't know how you're going to respond to it. It might be sad. You know, it might make you, it might generate feelings of anger. It might hurt.
generate feelings of shame, but it's part of our history. We're going to learn it based on the documents and the records that we have. And we also make sure that we have space in our classrooms for students to feel however they feel and to respect how people receive that material.
We don't shame folks. We don't do that in the classroom. We respect. I mean, I've been in the classroom where students are angry. I've been in the classrooms where we're talking about joyful moments of history and also very, very painful moments of history because that is what history is. It's not a one story that has a consensus leading to progress and success.
You know, we heard Mike Gonzalez a moment ago talking about the 1619 Project, and I want to ask you about that because that was criticized by some as trying to rewrite history, and it fueled a big debate. I don't want to sort of get into that debate right now, but I'm just wondering, is there valid concern that the efforts to rewrite history according to a political point of view is a problem on both the left and the right? Or how would you sort of think about that question?
Well, one thing I would say is that part of projects like the 1619 Project and a number of other studies have been that when you look at, if you go back to the history books that were written in the 19-teens, in the 1920s, in the 1930s,
you won't find stories of various groups of people, including African Americans. Textbooks, even in the 1950s and 60s, rarely incorporated or talked or addressed slavery. So the 1619 Project was a project built on research and interviews and
all kinds of artifacts and historical records that Nicole Hannah-Jones did with a number of scholars and trained historians, artists, and so forth to uncover aspects of American history that had never been told. And I think what made people uncomfortable is that it didn't always paint America in a beautiful light. And that wasn't the agenda. It was just, how can you, how can, it's difficult to
For one to say, you know, if you know the history of slavery and you look at the laws that govern slavery and the kinds of restrictions placed upon African-Americans and other groups of people since then, you'll understand that this was not something that's as celebratory as one might want to see. Right. Right.
Dinah Ramey Berry, stay with us. She's professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back with more in a moment. We're talking about President Trump's executive order targeting the Smithsonian and what it could mean for how Americans understand their shared history. Stay with us. We'll be right back. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.
Before we continue our conversation today, a quick word about On Point. Next week, when Meghna is back, we'll have a special week-long series about boys' education.
By every metric, American boys are falling behind girls in academics as early as eight years old. It's a gap that only grows as boys become men. Our series will explore what's behind that and what can be done about it. We're calling it Falling Behind the Miseducation of America's Boys on the radio, in the On Point podcast feed, and at onpointradio.org. So that's next week.
Today we're talking about President Trump's executive order targeting the Smithsonian and what it could mean for how Americans understand their history. Joining us is Jennifer Schuessler. She's a reporter with The New York Times. Also, Dinah Ramey Berry. She's a professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. And Dinah, before I let you go, I want to ask you one more question about the Smithsonian, specifically the African American Museum, which has come under attack by critics,
who say museums like this contribute to the idea that it makes Americans – that it makes America look bad and makes Americans feel bad. Can you sort of respond to those kinds of concerns and, yeah, your reaction to that?
Well, as I was saying earlier, we have to make sure that the history that we're presenting is accurate based on records and artifacts. And that is absolutely what the National Museum of African American History and Culture has done. The artifacts, the years it took to find material for that museum and to tell a story that had not been told on a national stage.
We have to be comfortable with understanding that history is filled with both triumph and tragedy. And I believe that the museum did a wonderful job at displaying this difficult history at some periods and very, very celebratory and triumphant aspects of our history.
They also offer space there to reflect on that. But one thing we cannot control is how people respond to the history. And we shouldn't try to. We should just understand that we have a national narrative that is complex like any piece of history in any place of history. It's always complex and we need to be more comfortable with that.
All right. That's Dinah Ramey Berry. She is professor of history and Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Dinah, thank you so much for joining us today. Very grateful to have you. Thank you. And Jennifer Schuessler with The New York Times, you've been listening for the last 40 minutes or so. What do you make of what are you taking away from the debate today from the different points of view we're hearing about this subject?
I mean, I think for me it really just underlines the degree to which we, you know, we're a huge country, very diverse country, and with many, many different opinions about our history.
You know, many criticisms and, you know, I should say as a point of clarification, the 1619 Project was brought up a lot. And that was a product specifically of the New York Times Magazine. I work on the news side, so I was not involved with that, although I obviously read it and have followed all of the conversation about it over many years. I mean, I think basically I, you know, I think there's a real...
debate here that, you know, whatever one thinks of it, that, you know, the president is putting his finger on something that's very politically charged, but I think also very intellectually complicated. Right. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about past controversies at the Smithsonian that have sort of followed a similar script here. Can you give us a little bit of history about
Yeah. And I'm thinking of a couple of different things in particular, but I wanted to just sort of tee them up for you. I mean, this isn't the first time the Smithsonian has faced something like this, right? Yes. I mean, I do think that among historians I've spoken to and museum people, nobody could really think of a time when
the president himself or, you know, the executive branch, you know, harshly criticized, attacked, whatever word you want to use, the Smithsonian, you know, directly challenged it, seemed to want to push out the director. But, you know, things, exhibits that have been there have sometimes stirred controversy. There's a very, very, I'm old enough to remember this, but there was a very famous thing that happened in 1994 when the Air and Space Museum, you know, one of the most popular museums in the system, was going to do an exhibit about the Enola Gay, the
bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. So if you go to that museum, one thing you see is all of these amazing aircraft and spacecraft. Like it's very, you get to see the actual planes. Yeah, it's a pretty exciting place. Yeah, haven't been there in a while, but I need to go back. But anyway, so they were going to show the Enola Gay itself or part of it. And then
You know, these exhibits don't just spring out of the head of one curator and then go up. There's very complex processes that go for years of consulting with curators, historians, writing scripts, sending them out for peer review. So maybe about a year before this exhibit was going to go up on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, a script was circulating online.
It came under strong criticism from some veterans groups, some members of Congress, saying this exhibit puts too much weight on the suffering of veterans.
You know, Japanese victims on the ground. There was going to be a lot of stuff talking about the arms race, the nuclear arms race, you know, that following World War II up into the present. And this came under intense criticism. It was pared down, revised. Ultimately, the show was
went up in a very stripped-down form that was just part of the plane with super minimal text, which then was criticized for ignoring the human impact of this bomb. So that—and I think the thing that's striking here is the criticism came from members of Congress. I don't think that—you know, President Clinton was president at the time. I don't think the White House was weighing in on this or trying to tell the Smithsonian what to do. Really interesting. Interesting.
Well, let me introduce Richard Cohen. He's author of Making History, The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past. He joins us from New York City right now. Richard Cohen, great to have you. Thanks for joining us. Glad to be with you, Anthony.
So I'm interested in your take. I was reading something that you wrote and that Trump's efforts to rewrite history is nothing new, that lots of leaders have done this in the past. So walk us through what you're thinking about when you say that.
Well, it's been with us forever, really. The emperor Augustus Caesar banned the writings of Julius Caesar and of Ovid because he felt they didn't fit in with his worldview. And ever since, people who lead their countries have wanted to make sure that their national past story has heroes and that the history which people have is
celebrates the nation rather than criticizes it. Right. A good example of that, I guess, elsewhere in the world today, Vladimir Putin of Russia. What has Putin done to rewrite the history of his country? Well, I would say that the context of the current debate over the Smithsonian is a very broad and important one because I think our understanding of history and the presentation and writing of history is under attack.
And it's not just Putin who has dismantled research places like Memorial, the Sakharov Institute, Gorbachev Foundation, and they're taking in the historical documents, has banned really any kind of dissent or different teaching. His Minister of Culture said that having alternative versions of history should be a crime.
But that extends to the Chinese view on how history should be taught. And not just, you know, those great autocracies, but at a time when autocracies are having increased impact on life in the world, you've got other countries, India, China,
Brazil, Turkey, who are, to use a phrase that I think a Spanish newspaper, El Pais, use, the criminalization of opinion. This is only one view of the past, and that is view of the controlling government should be heard or be able to be read about. That's a heavy thought, the criminalization of opinion. Is that where you fear that this kind of executive order is leading toward? Yeah.
Well, the wonderful historian Anne Applebaum wrote in her book, Autocracy, Inc., sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie, it's to make people fear the liar. And I think that's a danger in what's happening in America right now. Mm-hmm.
And you've got, you know, you mentioned J.D. Vance's being on the board of the Smithsonian. In 2021, he said, we have to attack the universities in this country.
Will you respond to this idea, though, that to what extent historians might be influenced by ideological assumptions? Is that a danger? I mean, history can be influenced by ideological assumptions. They can be it can become sort of argument driven. So so how do we deal with that? And does that pose any?
Does that suggest that the criticisms, and not necessarily the specific criticisms of the Smithsonian, but any criticism of any sort of historical effort to tell the history, that it might be flawed because of these ideological assumptions?
I was thinking you're an expert on urban violence and have produced programs on that. I'm wondering if you did a new version of that, whether people would say you were being ideologically unsound. The truth is that— What you mean, your point is that as people accumulate new evidence, they might sort of change their conclusions. Is that the idea there?
Absolutely. I mean, history is really, the history that comes down to us, is a continuing dialogue between the past and the present. Right. And we're continually changing our views. Who built Stonehenge and why did they build it? Even in the last few years, that ancient debate has continued to find new evidence. But to go back to your first question, historians...
have always had an agenda. Some of our best historical writing has been by people with very fierce prejudices. Edward Gibbon, for instance, or Eric Hobsbawm. Wherever you look,
Historians put their own views consciously or unconsciously, putting their words to really putting their thumb on the balance to put across what they believe the past should be about and how we should interpret it. Right. What's your biggest concern about where executive orders like this lead? Are you concerned, for example, they could lead to, I don't know, potluck?
popular museums being shut down or that their exhibits are just weakened? What's the biggest concern here? Well, it's not just museums. It's archives, libraries, research establishments. I think it's part of the current administration's plan to really change the way history is presented throughout the United States. And the Smithsonian controversy is just one aspect of that.
One's got to remember that first that Trump himself has little respect for history. In five recorded meetings between himself and Vladimir Putin, there are in fact no actual records. They were destroyed. Trump
deletes tweets, tears up documents, even though, as I understand it, that's a criminal activity. He's not interested in the past being properly recorded. And if you look at the way that we are treating history at present, over the last decade, we've torn down 160 monuments, rightly or wrongly, and we're now seeing new ones being put up.
And it's also, I think, as I say, the larger context. Not only are autocracies throughout the world trying to affect how history is recorded and written,
It's the interest in history itself is under attack. So it really is a crisis in the importance of history in our lives. 13 to 14 year olds in America have seen a huge drop in the amount of time that they study history. That particular age group was in 2022 marked below basic levels of understanding of history.
People who study history at university, well, people who took degrees in history or allied subjects are over a third down from six years ago. It's troubling statistics there. Richard Cohen, author of Making History, The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past. Richard, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your perspective. It's really good to have you.
And Jennifer Schuessler of The New York Times, let's wrap it up with you. What should we expect from this order going forward? I mean, what do you expect? Will exhibits be changed? Leadership changed? Funding rescinded? Any idea what we should be expecting? That's a great question. And that's something I and colleagues are trying to find out. I don't know. I mean, I do think that...
It's easy to edit, delete, revise stuff that's online. And the Washington Post had a great story last weekend about
changes to websites maintained by the National Park Service, you know, on subjects relating to slavery, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad. Changing actual physical museum exhibits, that kind of thing, is much harder and much more complicated. So it's a little unclear whether the goal of the administration is to, you know, push out Lonnie Bunch, to actually revise exhibits, to
people to self-censor, like very unclear. So I don't really know. I would like to flag one thing, not to raise a whole other topic, but it's been much less noted. But the second half of this executive order concerned the Department of the Interior, basically the National Park Service. The president directed the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, to look at all changes to the
Markers, monuments, exhibits on federal land. So basically you're talking about the National Park Service and
you know, get rid of things. I mean, I don't have the language in front of me that, you know, denigrate people from the past. So we're talking about negative view, for example, civil war generals. Are you talking about everything? You know, everything. Yeah. And again, this is something I think, you know, what is it? 17 million people go to the Smithsonian every year. Maybe 5 million of those go to the history museums every
Tens of millions of people visit national park sites, whether you're talking about the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, Gettysburg. So these are really places where people who are not in school, who are no longer in school, are absorbing historical information. So one thing I am very interested in is what the impact will be there. And unlike the Smithsonian, the Department of the Interior and the National Park Services is under the control of the president. Interesting.
Interesting. Jennifer Schluesser, reporter for The New York Times. She covers scholarship, history and ideas. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your reporting on this. Thanks so much. And all I'd say is millions of people visit the museums of the Smithsonian Institution. They're an amazing resource. They're free and they're there for now and one hopes for years to come. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.
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